http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/printArticle.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=395225&version=1&template_id=37&parent_id=17
Morocco suspends Jazeera operations
Publish Date: Saturday,30 October, 2010, at 12:01 PM Doha Time
AFP/Rabat
The director of Al Jazeera Morocco, Abdelkader Kharroubi, sits in an
office of the news channel headquarters yesterday in Rabat
Morocco has suspended the operations of the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television
news channel in Rabat and withdrawn the accreditations of its staff, the
communications ministry said yesterday.
The ministry said the sanctions followed "numerous failures in (following) the
rules of serious and responsible journalism", while a leading rights group said
it was a "backward step" for the kingdom. The Al Jazeera bureau chief in
Rabat, Palestinian Abdelkader Kharroubi, said the channel "has always respected
the rule of professionalism and neutrality, particularly in Morocco".
He added that "unfortunately the question of Al Jazeera is not only in the
hands of the communications ministry. Other parties decide at this level."
Without identifying these "parties", Kharroubi said the suspension was "a
mistake on the part of the Moroccan authorities, a mistake which has nothing to
do with us." Communications Minister Khalid Naciri said that "a refusal to be
objective and impartial systematically tarnishes Morocco's image. "We reproach
this channel for ignoring the main principles and transmitting a caricature of
Moroccan reality." A government official who declined to be named said the
authorities took exception "to the way Al Jazeera handles the issues of
Islamists and Western Sahara."
More than 2,000 Islamists have been arrested and sentenced in Morocco since the
Casablanca bombings of May 16, 2003, when more than 40 people were killed in an
attack by Islamist extremists. A former Spanish colony, Western Sahara was
annexed by Morocco after settlers withdrew in 1975. The move was violently
opposed by separatist Polisario guerrillas until the UN brokered a ceasefire in
1991.
Amina Bouayach, head of the Moroccan Human Rights Organisation, said the move
"shows Morocco's reluctance to continue a process of opening up, particularly
as concerns freedom of the press." "Unlike Algeria and Tunisia, where the Al
Jazeera bureaus have been closed for a long time, Morocco appeared as an
exception," she said. "With this suspension one can talk of a step backwards."
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