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It was the Moroccan
spring and the air was discernibly filled with high expectations and,
sometimes, extravagant hopes, in a country that has experienced decades of a
dreadful dictatorship: namely the Years of Lead. The belief was that Morocco
had an opportune moment; a historic window with the potential to become the first
Arabic country to genuinely embrace a process of full democratization with a
clear separation of powers, and with the aim of establishing
strong and independent institutions. The painful and tumultuous past was
to be confronted; people would end up reconciling with the establishment and
with the monarchy. The Press was getting freer; the taboos were being smashed
one after the other.
Ten years later, the dominant feeling is that of a missed opportunity, a
departure from past official rhetoric and a steady backtrack as expressed by
many bloggers and online news websites this week, as Moroccans commemorate the
first decade of the reign of Mohammed VI.
Khalid Jamal, Global Voices
Sir;
Our words are hunted, our phrases crucified, our thoughts shackled by so-called
red lines, our writings ridiculed, our dailies, weeklies and magazines dragged
to courts.
Many of our colleagues have experienced imprisonment and even, in some cases,
torture. We have all become indeed "prisoners," with a suspended
sentence.
Our opponents, the enemies of any real democratization in this country, seem to
have signed our death warrant and may be about to achieve just that. But our
exclusion will not hide the facts and surely will not solve the ills of our
country; quite the contrary.
Marwa Rakha, Global Voices
"Last November Ibrahim El Sayed Ibrahim was all over Libyan newspapers when he reported a money laundering operation to the Egyptian Embassy; he was hailed as the Egyptian hero who busted an international gang. Two Libyan officers summoned him to the station, blamed him for reporting the gang to the Egyptian embassy not to the Libyan police, broke every single bone in his body, dumped him in a field, and left him to die. Divine intervention saved him when the owner of the farm found him and took him to the hospital; he stayed in the intensive care unit for a week."
