Morocco’s Public Media Continues to Ignore Amazigh Languages in it’s Awareness Campaigns Against Coronavirus

Casablanca – Despite the latest recommendations released by the High Council for Audiovisual Communication, HAKA, calling for an urgent necessity to include the Amazigh language in all Coronavirus awareness campaigns, along with Arabic and sign languages, Moroccan public radios and television stations continues to ignore the public interest during this national emergency declared by the state. 

Government institutions on the other side, weren’t any better than public media networks, they have also ignored all the correspondence from the HAKA and many calls from Amazigh rights voices, and continued to release all awareness campaign and national alerts in relation to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, aimed at stalling the fast-expanding virus in the country, with using only Arabic and French languages, in a nation with an illiteracy rate of 30% in people over the age of 15. 

Although the new 2011 Moroccan constitution included the Amazigh language as an official language of the country, a language that is spoken by an estimated 35 to 40 percent of Morocco’s population. But North African pan-Arab regimes, whether nationalist or Islamist, has long been hostile to the Amazigh language, perceived as a threat to national cohesion!

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