On World Press Freedom Day, imprisoned Moroccan journalist Mustafa Hormatallah began a three-day hunger strike today to protest his imprisonment. Hormatallah was sentenced in to eight months in jail for possessing, “documents by criminal means.” Other journalists also planned a sit in Saturday.
The case against Horatallah began when he wrote an article about secret government documents that reveal alleged terrorist threats against Morocco. The weekly which Horatallah works for reproduced one of the secret documents which discussed the monitoring of jihadist Web sites. He was convicted of “concealing items derived from a crime” under Article 571 of the Moroccan Penal Code.
I've been doing a lot of reserach on Moroccan media and although it's been widely considered to have a diverse and somewhat "liberal" media system, there are still so many government restrictions on journalists. They are expected to practice self-censorship and to have an automatic filter on what they may report on. However, as soon as they make the government look bad or reveal anything to the public which the government does not want the public to know, they are immediately punished, imprisoned, threated, etc.
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