Petition online: http://linksito.com/51ze

alisanspapiers.blogspot.com (French) / alisinpapeles.blogspot.com (Spanish)

@AliLmrabet #alilmrabetID

martes, 30 de junio de 2015

Sahrawi Association of Victims of gross violations of human rights committed by the Moroccan State: Solidarity with the journalist Ali Lmrabet (Statement)

Tue, 06/30/2015


Sahrawi Association of Victims of gross violations of human rights committed by the Moroccan State, has declared its full solidarity with the Moroccan journalist Ali Lmrabet, in a statement issued by it on Monday, a copy of it reached SPS.
 The Association demanded in its statement the Moroccan state to facilitate the access to identity documents to Ali Lmrabet, and provide him with the conditions to continue his work as an independent journalist.
 Sahrawi Association also called on all international human rights organizations and relevant UN bodies to support journalist Ali Lmrabet in his rights.

It should be recalled that Ali Lmrabet, is engaged in a hunger strike and open sit-in,in front of Human  Rights Council headquarters in Geneva, to protest the violation of his rights as a citizen and a Moroccan independent journalist. SPS

090/125/TRA

domingo, 28 de junio de 2015

RSF: 100 Information Heros


For the first time ever, Reporters Without Borders is publishing a list of profiles of “100 information heroes” for World Press Freedom Day (3 May).Through their courageous work or activism, these “100 heroes” help to promote the freedom enshrined in article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the freedom to “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” They put their ideals in the service of the common good. They serve as examples.“World Press Freedom Day, which Reporters Without Borders helped to create, should be an occasion for paying tribute to the courage of the journalists and bloggers who constantly sacrifice their safety and sometimes their lives to their vocation,” said Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire.


Ali Lmrabet has been gagged in his country since 2005, when he was sentenced to a 10-year-ban on working as journalist for writing in a report for the Spanish daily El Mundo that the Sahrawis living in camps on the outskirts of the Algerian town of Tindouf were “refugees” and not “hostages” held against their will, as the Moroccan government tends to claim. The Moroccan penal code makes no provision for such a ban. He was previously sentenced in 2003 to three years in prison on a charge of “undermining respect for the king” for publishing cartoons of the monarchy and an interview with a left-wing former prisoner (calling himself as a “republican”) in his weekly Demain. After being held for eight months and staging a hunger strike for 50 days, he was released on a pardon from King Mohammed in January 2004. Nowadays, he lives in the northern city of Tétouan and, since 2011, has edited the Demain Online website, defying the ban on journalistic work. “Without censorship or self-censorship, except as regards people’s honour and dignity,” he says.

jueves, 25 de junio de 2015

Reporters Without Borders. JOURNALIST SAYS HE WILL BE “MOROCCO’S FIRST UNDOCUMENTED MOROCCAN”

PUBLISHED ON MONDAY 18 MAY 2015

http://en.rsf.org/morocco-journalist-says-he-will-be-morocco-18-05-2015,47903.html




Reporters Without Borders is appalled by the way the Moroccan authorities continue to persecute Ali Lmrabet, a satirical newspaper editor who wants to resume publishing newspapers in Morocco now that his ten-year ban on working as journalist has expired.
Ali Lmrabet, who has dual French and Moroccan nationality, is being denied the residence certificate he needs to get a new national ID card and to renew his passport, which expires on 24 June. Without these documents, he cannot move ahead with his declared intention to relaunch his newspapers.
A Reporters Without Borders “Information Hero” and winner of the Reporters Without Borders - Fondation de France Prize in 2003, Lmrabet used to edit Demain and Demain Magazine, publications that were banned in 2003.
Officially, he has been able to resume working as a journalist in Morocco since 11 April. He wasbanned from working for ten years after being convicted of libel.
But the authorities in the northern city of Tétouan have been refusing to give him a residence certificate since 20 April. In a statement issued on 5 May, quoting the interior minister, the Tétouan local administration said it had been established that Lmrabet does not live at the Tétouan address he gave, which is his father’s home.
The Tétouan 2nd district police station had nonetheless issued the certificate to Lmrabet on 22 April, only to demand it back the next day.
According to the information obtained by Reporters Without Borders, Lmrabet possesses all the documentation he needs to get a residence certificate. His address is indeed his father’s and it is the one that appears in his passport.
We are perplexed by the series of bureaucratic obstacles that are being imposed on Ali Lmrabet,” Reporters Without Borders deputy programme director Virginie Dangles said.
It is not clear why the Moroccan authorities are refusing to issue him this certificate. We urge them to provide him with the requested certificate so that he can renew his documents.”
Journalism blocked
The Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) – which is backing him and whose president testified on his behalf – has asked the Moroccan government to intercede at the national and local level but has not received an answer.
Lmrabet is convinced that the authorities are refusing him a residence certificate in order to prevent him from publishing again.
“I am going to become Morocco’s first undocumented Moroccan,” he told Reporters Without Borders. “I would like to think that, although this government does not like me, it cannot prevent me from having identity papers.”
His lawyer, Lahbib Mohamed Hajji, confirmed that Lmrabet’s papers had the same address as his fathers. Denying him a residence certificate is a violation of his right as a citizen, Hajji said.
Reporters Without Borders has repeatedly phoned and emailed the communication ministry in an attempt to get its version, but the ministry has not as yet responded.
Morocco is ranked 130th out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.

Press release


After more than two months of vain attempts to renew, in my home town, Tetouan, my identity documents (national electronic ID card, biometric passport) and facing the obstinate refusal of the Maroccan government to answer my requests - government which, since Thursday 25th June, arbitrarily made me become an illegal in my own country-, I have started an unlimited hunger strike. 
I am holding it on the Place of the Nations in Geneva, opposite to the United Nations Head Quarters, an institution meant to be the last shield to protect the citizen against the arbitrary slumps of his government . 

I am not asking for political asylum in Switzerland and I do not intend to stay in this country. 
My goal, in front of the UNO's HQ, is to demand, as any citizen, identity documents, in order to relaunch, in Marrocco, my satirical papers, forbidden in 2003, and, at the same time, to denounce the authoritarianism which rules us et which has made of my country a private property, whose inhabitants belong body and soul to the self-established master of the house. 
My sit-in and my hunger strike are peaceful. they will be held every day on the Place of the Nations. They will continue every evening at the House of associations, whose leaders have had the extreme kindness to grant me with their hospitality. 

Ali Lmrabet (lmrabet@gmail.com

Geneva, 25th June 2015

Newsweek: North Africa's chief satirist battles to keep residency permit

By 


The journalist and satirist behind North Africa's answer to Charlie Hebdo, Ali Lmrabet, has been told by Moroccan authorities that he cannot renew his residency permit or national ID, which expires in a few days' time.
Without legal ID, Lmrabet will not be able to launch his latest venture: a satirical magazine to continue where he left off a decade ago, when he was banned from journalism for "insulting the king".
"This is real satire," chuckles Lmrabet, who spent six months in jail in 2003 after an article in his satirical weekly Demain revealed plans to sell one of King Mohammed VI's numerous palaces. "They want to make me the first Moroccan who cannot get an ID card. Under the dictatorship of Hassan II people might have been denied a passport or a visa, but never this."
Demain was banned, while Lmrabet got an early release from his three-year sentence in January 2004. Then, in 2005, he was prohibited from practising his profession in Morocco for 10 years, after he was quoted saying that the people living in camps run by the Polisario – the force fighting for Western Sahara's independence from Morocco – were "refugees" and not the victims of a mass kidnapping, as the official line had it.
After the ban expired in April this year, Lmrabet returned from Spain to team up with his old cartoonist colleague Khalid Gueddar and Ahmed Snoussi, alias 'Bziz', a popular humourist. When the provincial administration refused to renew his residency permit, Lmrabet went to the local police, who granted the permit, which he then had photocopied. The next day, he says, the police commissioner called him in and begged him to return the paper. "He said he was a few years from retirement, that he was a diabetic and had hypertension. I gave it to him out of pity."
Both the provincial administration and the police are overseen by the interior ministry, directly controlled by Morocco's king. The Moroccan interior ministry declined to comment.
"The orders come from Rabat. We have no liberties, but the state has the liberty to do as it pleases," says Lmrabet, who adds that he will wait to see if the authorities reconsider their attitude before calling an international press conference. "I will tell everyone that five months after Charlie Hebdo the government not only will not let me have a magazine, but they also want to eliminate me altogether."
Morocco, the satirists notes, sent official condolences to Paris over January's attack by Islamist terrorists at Charlie Hebdo. "We live through satirical situations but we don't understand satire. As there isn't a real opposition, the regime thinks that we are the opposition. That isn't our role. This means there is something wrong with the system."