Morocco's “Makhzen” in tight corner after Echorouk's fact-finding assignment report in occupied Sahraoui town of Dakhla (Part 2)

The Moroccan authorities at the behest of the “Makhzen” reacted angrily through the launching of a large-scale manipulation campaign against my humble person and the newspaper “Echorouk”. The reasons behind this “acrimonious showdown” were patently known.   

• They were motivated by the fair-minded and rigorous fact-finding assignment report I drafted for Echorouk with the main intention being to unveil the appalling humanitarian disaster now besetting the occupied Sahraoui town of Dakhla and its surroundings.
• This fact-finding report came in to break as it were the silence of the international community about the horrendous situation facing the Sahraoui population living there.
• Certain of my Moroccan friends assured me that the Makhzen’s reaction would never have been so scathing if my assignment report was published in a foreign newspaper other than in Algeria’s leading news outlet namely “Echorouk”.
• It is nonetheless widely known that Echorouk’s reports about Morocco have always been fair-minded and respectful of the journalistic ethics contrary to those regularly published by the Moroccan press which don’t waver to indulge in slandering and disinformation rhetoric against Algeria and its institutions when the Western Sahara issue happens to be the order of the day.
• The reasons of the Makhzen’s ire were also motivated by the fact that our intrusion into the occupied Sahraoui town of Dakhla was made under the nose of the Moroccan security services and sometimes even under their willful protection.
• Nobody was seemingly aware of my incursion into Dakhla as everyone attending the symposium and its organizers knew that I was simply an Algerian writer and journalist sent on a fact-finding mission by the newspaper Echorouk.
• The reading of the leading article of the Moroccan daily “El Aâlem” was, to this effect, flabbergasting: as it said: “the conditions of stay in Morocco of the former Algerian intelligence officer, Anouar Malek, in Morocco remain to be cleared”.
• All the ploys were fair for the Moroccan side at the behest of the angered and cornered Makhzen to obfuscate the issue and to turn the world attention away from the plight of the oppressed Sahraoui populations whose legitimate aspirations for freedom and independence are being unscrupulously and callously smothered by the annexionist Moroccan regime.
• The overzealous El Aâlem daily did not also hesitate to demand an in – depth investigation into the ins and outs of my visit.
• Other Moroccan press articles have been vehemently calling for the opening of a judicial inquiry into the alleged “violation of Morocco’s territorial integrity” and thereby the prosecution of all those people who had invited me to attend the symposium and who had allowed me to put together this fact – finding report about the Sahraouis’ dire ordeal under the long-running Moroccan occupation…

                                                         To be continued…