Nearly a month after the devastating earthquake caused thousands of deaths and injuries in Morocco’s High Atlas region, Morocco’s ambassador to the UN, Omar Hilale, condemned it. Algeria’s use of this disaster.

“I hope that the difficult times Morocco is experiencing, the grief experienced by families, the deaths, thousands of injured people and destruction encourage them to remain silent to honor the moment, to show solidarity,” Hilale began. by appointing his Algerian counterpart to the UN.

The Moroccan diplomat accused his neighboring country of doing this “shedding crocodile tears while attacking a country that is still experiencing drama”. “They show their solidarity, their support, but at the same time they inject poison, they insult the dead, they insult the Moroccan people,” Hilale added.

Morocco’s representative at the UN referred to reports from several Algerian media such as Third National Television (ANT3) And AL24 what they did about the earthquake. Both media use rhetoric and images that align with Algeria’s official political position. against Morocco.

The Algerian press exploited the earthquake to promote the regime’s political agendahighlighting Algeria’s “immediate offer of assistance” and criticizing “Morocco’s slow response to the crisis.”

As a neighboring country, Algeria offered post-earthquake assistance. However, this offer, as well as that of France, was not accepted by Rabat, who only asked for help from Spain, England, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. As a result, Algerian media, like some French media, expressed their rejection of the decision taken by the Moroccan Government.

As you remember Morocco World Newssince the devastating earthquake, the Algerian press, in particular ANT3 And AL24, hasn’t stopped attacking the Kingdom because it didn’t accept its helpwithout which, Rabat is unlikely to be able to overcome this catastrophe.

Instead of focusing on the horrific drama experienced by the country and its citizens, recognizing the hard work carried out by rescue teams in extremely difficult terrain, or highlighting the extraordinary wave of national solidarity, Algeria’s official television channels chose to politicize this natural disasteras reported by Moroccan media.

According to Mohamed Mliless, an independent researcher in the field of Ecolinguistics and Discourse Analysis, due to the current geopolitical tensions between Morocco and Algeria – countries that do not maintain diplomatic relations – The Algerian press used the earthquake as a new front to confront Morocco.

In this case, Mliless emphasized on Morocco World News as Algerian media focused on highlighting Algeria’s humanitarian response to highlight its leadership and compassion, while criticizing Morocco’s response to the disaster. They also highlighted the issue of Western Sahara, the main issue facing Algeria and Rabat, although it has nothing to do with the earthquake.

“There is no doubt that the Algerian regime is taking advantage of this opportunity to settle scores with Morocco in political, economic, sports and cultural matters.”, explained the researcher. “They believe we are in a moment of weakness and believe that they should take this opportunity to launch relentless attacks in an attempt to further weaken the Cherifian Kingdom,” he added.

The language used by the media to discuss earthquakes is not neutral. The Algerian press chose to use warlike language, thus revealing certain biases aimed at distorting the public’s perception of the events.

Among the words most used when reporting the disaster were “failure, incompetence and neglect.”while other positive concepts such as “preparation, solidarity and resilience” barely appear in the report.

Even the selection of images reflects some bias. “Specifically, the selected image represents only one aspect of the situation”said Mliless, who assured that this was done with the aim of “further strengthening the narrative of Morocco as a country ‘unable to respond to this crisis alone’”.

“This selective representation not only shapes viewers’ perceptions but also subtly reinforces the media’s underlying political agenda regarding Algeria.”concluded Mliless.

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