Since the terrible tragedy which saw two Scandinavian tourists assassinated near Imlil by a quartet of thick brutes claiming to be from Daesh, the Algerian press is seemingly beside itself!
Not a single day has gone by since that fateful Monday 17th December without Algerian hacks shamelessly rejoicing in this barbaric act, taking advantage of this tragedy to stigmatise Morocco and Moroccans, portraying them, from first to last, as supporters or active members of Islamist terrorism.
The scavengers …
Quoting an article from the sleazy Sun newspaper, London’s best-known gutter-press publication, the Algerian newspapers, in every language, have endeavoured to demonstrate to their readers that Morocco is not a safe country and that the vast majority of Daesh terrorists in Syria are of Moroccan origin.
Not satisfied with simply doing their dirty work of twisting the facts, the press of our Eastern neighbour has been cooing with pleasure and has been making such a big deal of announcing that our tourism industry will be affected, that the Kingdom will slide further into crisis, that foreigners will quickly desert the Kingdom or now will no longer go there.
According to these ‘vulture’ publications, European capitals are under threat from Moroccan terrorists affiliated to Daesh and Spain, with whom Morocco enjoys high-quality relations when it comes to security, is the country most at risk.
These articles from the neighbouring press are inadmissible, unacceptable and nothing short of scurrilous!
A case of the pot calling the kettle black
By behaving in such a way, the Algerian press has blatantly violated journalism’s professional code of ethics in making outrageous and systematic accusations and by ignoring the essential and fundamental requirement which is to reject any form of terrorism, regardless of where it occurs.
Admittedly, the Moroccan press generally tends to be hard on the Algerian regime but no one in Morocco ever dared glorify the Islamist armed groups that sowed terror in Algeria between 1998 and 2004, which resulted in more than 200,000 dead and missing during that civil war!
More recently, when AQIM terrorists led by Mokhtar The One-Eyed took dozens of people hostage at the BP-Sonatrach gas plant in Ain Amenas in January 2013, the Moroccan press did not seize upon this opportunity to stigmatise Algeria and its people.
Because, as far as we are concerned, the death of 40 employees of ten different nationalities is not an occasion to rejoice in such a tragedy.
We will be sure to look into the causes and reasons for such an outrageously anti-Moroccan attitude.
Algerian journalists, whom we have the decency to call our ‘peers’, are surely not ignorant of the fact that the knee-jerk reaction to any terrorist act perpetrated in any one North African country is, simplistically and harmfully, to lump together all other countries within the entire region.
All in the same boat!
The consequence of an attack in the Aurès Mountains in Algeria, a clash with armed Islamists near Mount Chaambi in Tunisia, a double murder in Imlil is that every North Africa state is stigmatised, blamed and blacklisted by a section of the Western press, reinforcing among European public opinion (in particular) the false but long-held conviction that these countries are plagued by insecurity and instability.
In addition, by behaving in this way, the Algerian press is doing its very best to discredit Algiers’ official line which states that terrorism and armed groups are no longer operational in that country.
But, above all, to take such devilish pleasure in the misfortune of others, to take advantage of a horrible terrorist murder in order to attack a neighbouring state and a sister nation, is despicable, filthy, petty and vile!
Given the context, it is worth recalling the words of President François Mitterrand, who denounced the attitude of the French press whom he held responsible for the suicide of former Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy 1 May 1993:
“There can be no justifiable explanation for feeding a man’s honour to the hounds…”.
Allow us to adapt this verdict and write: “There can be no justifiable explanation for feeding the honour of a country and its people to the jackals and hyenas…”.
Fahd YATA
Original article : https://lnt.ma/presse-les-chiens/
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