Morocco – praag.org

Blue chip companies pull back from Clintons

An Exxon Mobil spokesman said this week that the company has decided not to be involved in the Clinton Global Initiative this year. The oil company said its decision was unrelated to recent scrutiny of the foundation, but this is the first year it has not been a sponsor since 2009. Other sponsors, including Monsanto, are reevaluating their partnerships.

Some blue-chip companies that have long provided large donations to the Clinton Foundation are pulling back or reassessing their support.

Bill and Chelsea Clinton are convening foreign leaders here at a lush golf resort set in a palm grove this week to showcase their foundation’s charitable work. But the conference also highlights new controversies engulfing the Clinton family’s vast philanthropic enterprises as Hillary Rodham Clinton begins her presidential campaign.

A liberal human rights organization and several Republican lawmakers, for instance, are criticizing the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation for accepting donations from a Moroccan government-owned mining company, whose seven-figure sponsorship of this week’s gathering came amid growing scrutiny of foreign-government contributions to the charity.

This week’s flashy Morocco conference — a first-ever Africa and Middle East spinoff of the flagship CGI held each September in New York — underscores the foundation’s controversial fundraising practices, which have become a potential anchor on Hillary Clinton’s nascent campaign.

Source: Washington Post

Ebola: South Africa rejects offer to host 2015 Africa Cup of Nations

Sports authorities of the South African Republic followed the steps of Morocco and also decided against hosting next year’s Africa Cup of Nations biennial football championship, citing concerns over the outbreak of deadly Ebola virus in West Africa.

“The possibility of holding the Africa Cup of Nations is excluded,” South African Sports Minister Fikile April Mbalula said.

South Africa already hosted the Africa Cup of Nations in 2013 in place of Libya, which was torn by the war at that time. “Our budget is incapable of holding the championship in 2015,” Mbalula said. “This is totally impossible.”

Mbalula also said that on top of everything, his country was “facing the task of fighting Ebola.” “We are not immune to it,” the South African sports minister added.

Morocco earlier claimed that it made the decision to cancel hosting the 16-nation football tournament, scheduled to run between January 17 and February 8 next year, as it wanted to avoid holding an event involving countries where Ebola cases were registered, as well as to prevent the expansion of the deadly virus.

Issa Hayatou, the president of the African football’s governing body CAF, arrived in the South Africa Republic last Thursday in order to find a solution to the emerged problem concerning the hosting country.
The CAF earlier stated that it had no plans of postponing or changing the championship’s date of January 17-February 8.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported last week that the Ebola epidemic was spreading geographically and the death toll exceeded the figure of 4,500, while the number of probable and suspected cases exceeded neared 9,000.

Source: ItarTass

Being a black terrorist in Africa

They were treated like terrorists, writes Malaika wa Azania.

There has been speculation about what transpired in Morocco a few days ago when a black youth ambassador for the AU landed in Morocco.

The full-time student in Grahamstown is a member of the African Youth Initiative on Climate Change (AYICC) South Africa.

The CCDA-4 is organised by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca), the AU Commission (AUC) and the African Development Bank (AfDB).

In Casablanca in Morocco, the crisis of being a “black terrorist”, began.

Upon arrival in Morocco, at 12.10pm on Tuesday, Moroccan authorities, in spite of valid and authentic documentation, refused to grant the blacks visas.

Some people in the group were allowed to enter the country while others were denied entry.

People holding diplomatic passports, were high-ranking officials but were equally being denied entry.

The language barrier between the Afro-Saxons and the Moroccan authorities, who speak French and Arabic, was making communication a “nightmare” according the youth ambassador.

The sense of entitlement black South Africans suffer from, increased the antagonism on both sides.

Eventually Wa Azania was asked to “drink water from a toilet” because there was nothing else available.

Washing her underwear and drying it with a hand-dryer, and using her fingers to pry the plaque off her teeth, was “the most humiliating experience”, she said. ” No woman should ever have to go through that.

“We were treated like terrorists who had gone to Morocco to destabilise the government, or as asylum seekers who were refusing to be deported back to their homes,” Malaika wa Azania said.

The youth ambassador couldn’t stay in Morocco after the trauma she said, and booked onto the next available flight eventhough they were granted visas.

Moroccan diplomat assassinated in Pretoria

A Moroccan diplomat accredited to South Africa has been reportedly killed and his lifeless body was found in a pool of blood at his home in Pretoria on Tuesday.

According to Morocco’s Embassy in South Africa, the victim, M. Noureddine Fatmi, who was in charge of consular affairs, was apparently murdered in his apartment in the district of Monument Park in Pretoria where he was living by himself but the circumstances of the assassination were not determined yet, the North Africa Post reported.

South African authorities have opened an investigation into the death of the diplomat.

Immediately after it was informed about the death of the diplomat, the Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs started administrative and legal procedures, in collaboration with South African authorities, to shed full light on the murder.

Crime rates are very high in South Africa which is listed in many reports and polls as “dangerous.”

More than 40 people are murdered in South Africa each day and last year South Africans reported more than 300 000 burglaries at residential and business properties, according to police data.

Maybe this is the reason that explains why M. Fatmi, a spouse and a father, preferred not to move his entire family to South Africa when he was appointed to his position in Pretoria.

100 blacks storm EU fence, only 20 get in

Officials say around 100 migrants of sub-Saharan origin have stormed the barbed-wire border fence separating Spain’s North African enclave of Melilla from Morocco, with 20 managing to get across.

An Interior Ministry statement Tuesday said the storming occurred at 6 a.m. The migrants who avoided being repelled by police made their way to the city’s temporary migrant accommodation center. Police eventually repatriate the migrants or let them go.

There were no reports of injuries.

Also, Spain’s maritime rescue service said 10 migrants were intercepted trying to reach Spain by boat after crossing the Strait of Gibraltar.

Thousands of African immigrants living illegally in Morocco regularly try to enter Spain’s enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta in a bid to reach Europe in search of a better life.

Source: mailonline

Immigrants drown after Spain fires rubber bullets

The European Commission wants Spain to account for the drowning of 14 migrants who recently failed to swim to Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa. Spain earlier admitted that rubber bullets were fired at them, but claimed no one was injured.

“The commission will be requesting explanations from the Spanish authorities on these events,” EU Home Affairs spokesperson Michele Cercone said, adding that the commission has a right to act if there’s evidence that a member state has violated EU laws.

On Thursday, Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz admitted that local border police, in an effort to turn back around 200 migrants who tried to cross the frontier between Morocco and Spain’s Ceuta on February 6, had indeed fired rubber bullets at them.

While some tried to cross on land, at least fourteen migrants drowned in the Mediterranean trying to swim around a man-made breakwater that separates Moroccan and Spanish waters. Spanish police say they are still searching for more victims.

According to the Spanish Interior Minister, the rubber bullets were fired at a distance of 25 meters to deter people from entering Spain while they were in the water. Diaz told a parliamentary commission that the shots were never intended to hit the migrants, whose behavior he described as aggressive. Spanish police posted online video footage of migrants throwing stones at the border fence. The footage didn’t show what had happened when some of them tried to swim around to Spanish land, however. Ceuta, on the north coast of Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar on the Mediterranean Sea, has a population of about 83,000.

According to the online newspaper EUObserver, 23 people managed to make it to Ceuta’s El Tarajal beach, but were immediately turned over to Moroccan authorities. Under European asylum and migration law, anyone who steps foot on member states’ territory is eligible to have their asylum request reviewed before being deported. Although Spanish Interior Minister admitted a group of migrants made it to the beach, Diaz said the group did not enter Spanish territory, since they allegedly never made it past the line of waiting border guards.

Meanwhile, the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmstrom said she was “very concerned about Spanish police using rubber bullets to deter migrants.”

“I expect clarifications from the authorities,” Cecilia Malmstrom wrote on her Twitter account.

Spain’s interior minister has admitted police should not have fired rubber bullets at migrants trying to reach Ceuta last month.

Jorge Fernandez Diaz said that rubber bullets were unlikely to deter migrants from the country’s North African enclave.

At least 15 migrants drowned on February 6 as hundreds tried to swim to Ceuta from Morocco.

Hundreds of migrants storm EU fence

Hundreds of migrants from Morocco were trying to cross the southern EU border at Melilla, a Spanish exclave, on Monday before dawn.

Having torn down a part of a triple six-meter high fence, about 100 made it through, Spanish government officials in the territory said in a statement.

They were the latest of thousands of migrants who try to reach Spain from Africa across the fence or by sea, forced to leave by unrest in Northern Africa, most of them from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. – RT

Scraping the bottom of the barrel on Syria

Right behind the US on Syria — Albanians right behind the US on Syria

It’s not likely to ease Americans’ concerns about going to war, but the White House announced Monday that Albania is on board with the Obama administration’s plans to punish Syria.

Tiny Estonia, too, has agreed that Syria must be held accountable for using chemical weapons. The Coalition of the willing on Syria includes such superpowers as Albania, Estonia, Honduras.

Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Honduras, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania and Morocco are the willing nations. And let’s not leave out Qatar, Romania and the United Arab Emirates.

They are the latest countries to sign on to a statement condemning the Syrian regime and calling for a “strong international response,” although not necessarily the missile strikes proposed by President Obama. A total of 25 nations support the statement, including the U.S. and Great Britain. – Washington Times

Thousands march in Morocco in support of Egyptian Islamists

Around 10,000 people took part in a demonstration in the Moroccan capital, Rabat, on Sunday in support of Islamists in Egypt locked in a deadly showdown with security forces.

The crowd carried banners condemning the police operations that have cost hundreds of lives among demonstrators demanding the reinstatement of Egypt’s army-ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and posters showing the dead in makeshift morgues in Cairo.

“Soldiers should be carrying out their duty of protecting the nation’s territory instead of killing their own people,” said Driss Leghroudi, a 33-year-old academic.

“History is repeating itself. It happened in Algeria in 1992 (with its civil war) … It’s Saudi Arabia which is behind it” in Egypt, he charged, as the crowd chanted for the expulsion of the Egyptian ambassador to Morocco.

Morocco initially adopted a neutral stand after last month’s toppling of Morsi but the authorities in Rabat have since expressed alarm over the carnage resulting from a security crackdown to remove Morsi’s supporters from the streets.

More than 750 people have been killed in violence across Egypt since Wednesday, official figures show. – AFP

Renting apartments to Africans strictly forbidden

Renting apartments to Blacks is strictly forbidden

“Renting apartments to Africans is strictly forbidden”. This message hangs in several building lobbies in Casablanca, Morocco. Some landlords have been enforcing this rule, even though it is completely illegal. Our Observer, a student from the Ivory Coast, experienced this discrimination firsthand a few months ago.

Several photos of these posters, written in both French and Arabic, have been circulating on social networks over the past few days. According to our Observers, the photos were taken in buildings in the residential Farah Essalam neighbourhood in the Oulfa area, where many students from sub-Saharan Africa live. Similar posters have also been reported in other parts of town.

While Morocco is located in northern Africa, many Moroccans don’t consider themselves “Africans”, a term they generally use to refer to sub-Saharan Africans.

“Discrimination against Africans has been firmly rooted here. Not all relationships with Moroccans are this confrontational, but life is definitely more unpleasant if you’re black. Personally, I’ve had stones thrown at me on the street several times, sometimes even fruit, depending on the person’s mood,” says a student from the Ivory Coast. – France24