New York August 14, 2017
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which advocates press freedom, said in a statement that it has registered several grave media freedom violations since the start of a wave of protests in Morocco’s northern Rif region and accuses the authorities in Morocco of deliberately obstructing the Moroccan and foreign reporters who have been trying to cover the ongoing peaceful protests in Rif region.
“The situation of Moroccan and foreign journalists covering the events in northern Morocco keeps on getting worse,” said Yasmine Kacha, the head of RSF’s North Africa bureau. “By trying to prevent coverage of the Rif protests, the Moroccan authorities are gradually turning this region into a no-go zone for independent media.”[ads1]
Kacha added: “RSF also calls on the Moroccan authorities to free all the citizen-journalists who have been arrested and to condemn all the physical attacks against media personnel who are just doing their job by covering these demonstrations.”
On April 26, 2017, World Press Freedom Index. unveiled the 2017 Index, which ranks 180 countries according to the level of freedom afforded to journalists. This year, Morocco has fallen from 131st to 133rd place, continuing a severe drop over recent years.
