Why Did Morocco Not Comment on Washington’s Criticism of Human Rights in the Kingdom?

Morocco used to respond every time to the annual US State Department report and human rights accusations, it even invited the ambassador of Washington, but this time it seemed to ignore the report issued in 2022, a move observers attributed to "strategic calculations.”

The 2021 US report included several accusations of human rights violations, including torture and political arrests, harming press freedom, and imposing serious restrictions on freedom of expression and the media.

 

Reliable Reports

On April 12, 2022, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken presented the US State Department report and talked about human rights violations in a number of countries in the world, stressing that the United States will continue to defend human rights.

Among the high-profile human rights issues in Morocco, the State Department stated that there were credible reports of torture of political prisoners by some members of the security forces, and serious restrictions on freedom of expression and the media, including the criminalization of some content criticizing the monarchy.

There were also corruption and substantial interference with freedom of assembly and association, including surveillance and intimidation of political activists.

The report stated that the government had taken steps to investigate officials who allegedly committed human rights violations, but investigations into abuses by police, security forces, and detention centers lacked transparency and often faced long delays and procedural obstacles that contributed to impunity.

Over the past years, Rabat's response in its statements was the same, describing the US State Department's human rights reports as “biased,” and that it “moved from giving information to making it all together and in details from a false assessment, and that it “lacks accuracy, facts, and reliable sources,” according to the monitoring of several previous statements.

Rather, in 2016, Morocco invited the US ambassador to Rabat to discuss the US State Department report.

Regarding the reasons for this “quiet silence,” the head of the Moroccan Center for Human Rights, Abdelilah el-Khoudari, explained that “the report was issued by the US State Department, meaning that “we are not before a human rights body, and therefore it is not easy to criticize, deny or respond to that with unconvincing answers.”

He stressed to Al-Estiklal that “restrictions on freedom of opinion and expression and the independent press and reprisals against some free pens are a reality, therefore criticism directed at Morocco is justified, whether the US State Department includes that in its reports or not.”

El-Khoudari added: “But what draws attention is the political interpretation of the content of the report. We are facing a report issued by a strategic ally of the Moroccan state, in the era of Democrats led by Joe Biden, who prioritizes human rights and democracy to some extent, and this is completely different from his predecessor, Donald Trump, who prefers to ignore human rights files of the allied governments.

 

Fake Media

What is remarkable about the coverage of this year's report is that the media ignored its contents, while Hespress, the Moroccan website, mentioned that the annual report of the US State Department praises the political climate in the Kingdom of Morocco.

Fraudulently in formulating a news follow-up to the report, it focused on the protocol formalities related to communication between institutions, paving the way for the criticism that overshadowed the content of the American report.

The For a Better Community page responded by saying: “Hespress and other (bribery) sites are lying to Moroccans,” stressing that the American report and the Hespress article are completely different.

The page explained that "this report strongly condemns the human rights situation in Morocco and confirms arbitrary arrests and malicious trials that do not recognize political detention.”

At the end of 2020, the United States recognized Morocco's sovereignty over the Sahara region, the famous dispute between Rabat and the Polisario Front, backed by Algeria, and on the same day announced Morocco and Israel's agreement to normalize relations between them.

Journalist Younis Maskin explained, in a Facebook post, that "the second report (after the 2020 report) removes the Sahara from the list of countries that the US State Department refers to in a special report."

He pointed out that "the document came with a report on Morocco and another on Western Sahara, and this transformation is not new as some thought, but rather is happening for the second year in a row, and is directly related to Trump's decision to recognize the Moroccan Sahara, issued at the end of 2020.”

 

Limited Impact

The head of the Moroccan Center for Human Rights, el-Khoudari, said: "To sum up, I do not see the report as having a significant impact on the course of relations between the two countries, and I do not even see it having an impact on reassessing aid as the United States is currently trying to do with Egypt for example under Al-Sisi’s rule.”

He explained to Al-Estiklal that "the bilateral relations between Morocco and America are very distinguished from its relations with the rest of the West, such as France, Germany, Spain, and others. Morocco is aware of the strong influence of America's positions on its geopolitical calculations and its first issue, the issue of the territorial integrity (Sahara region) of Morocco." Therefore, Rabat does not react to Washington's criticisms.

He pointed out that "some national institutions may come out in an attempt to refute some of what the US State Department has gone to, but it is confirmed that Morocco has other ways, I think, to make its strategic ally criticize and not do.”

Concerning the reasons for Washington maintaining its line of “criticism” while Morocco changed its policy “regarding the response,” el-Khoudari replied: “This may be due to the fact that the body authorized to draft the report in the US State Department enjoys objectivity and relative independence from the political calculations of the federal government.”