Moroccan Association for Human Rights flags increased repression in 2021

The Moroccan government expanded in 2021 internet censorship and tightened control over freedom of speech, said Morocco’s main independent rights body AMDH in its report on public freedoms published on Thursday.

“In 2021, Morocco witnessed an exceptional and unprecedented decline in freedom of opinion and expression, the media, the press, and blogging,” said the AMDH.

The report, presented at a press conference today, said the government continued with arrests of journalists and bloggers in a repressive context that encourages the expansion of defamation websites. Of these cases, the association said it worked on 170, mainly with journalists, bloggers, human rights defenders, and contractual teachers.

The AMDH noted retraction of bill No. 22.20 that sought to render ‘fake news’ punishable by prison sentences of up to five years when the purpose is to harm “national security.” The draft bill, which was received with a wide objection, did not pass.

But the pandemic, said the report, fostered a climate under which violations of Covid-19 rules were met with arrests that contradict calls by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Secretary-General of the United Nations to reduce prison populations, as a means to combat the pandemic.

1.530 citizens were arrested for violating the state of a health emergency, during the period between July 25, 2020, and April 22, 2021. 280,000 of them went on trial.

“This may be one of the reasons for prison overcrowding and the increase in the number of detainees in prisons by 5% compared to last year,” said the AMDH.

Restrictions related to Covid-19 rules seeped into the right to organize, said the association, counting 200,000 associations that faced in 2021 challenges related to establishing legal status.

“This concerns, in particular, some associations working in the human rights field, which the authorities consider annoying because they are not loyal to or in line with the state’s discourse.”

Associations, as well as protesting groups, were denied access to public spaces, based on “vague and loose phrases to prevent peaceful assemblies, without any direct legal action, (…) and respect for the basic rules upon which democratic life is based, including respect for human rights, the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly”

In 2021, the AMDH counted 143 protests, sit-ins, marches, and gatherings that were stopped.

” They mainly concern protests, organized by the human rights movement, the trade union movement, social movements, the unemployed, or the solidarity committees with political detainees, or against normalization and support for the Palestinian people.”