Moroccan Rapper Receives Prison Sentence Over Rap Lyrics

I will gladly count myself as subject to this caveat: let not one more single word be spoken about how unfairly scrutinized U.S. rappers' lyrics can be.

Personally, I can't recall one whose lyrics alone ended up making a felon of him or her.

Moroccan rapper Mouad Belghouat - AKA, El-Haqed ("the enraged") - can't say the same, the Associate Press reports. Belghouat was handed a one-year prison sentence Friday for performing lyrics about police corruption that were found to have attacked the security services' image. He was convicted without being allowed a final statement, and without his defense team present.

His attorneys say they've planned an appeal of the ruling.

Belghouat's material is often rooted in advocating democracy in Morocco and attacking corruption and social injustice. When he was arrested March 29, police charged him with insulting state employees and official institutions and accused of posting a song online with mocking police photos that included one officer given the head of a donkey. His defense denies his involvement with the photo posts.

Huh. In Morocco, that's called a crime. Here, it's called 4chan.

It's Belghouat's second conviction. He spent four months in jail last year for getting into a fight in the slum where he resides who supports the regime his lyrics frequently rail against.

Though the defense withdrew Monday following an altercation between Belghouat's supporters and an attorney representing the police, they claimed they expected to make a closing argument. Attorney Said Bouzerda arrived in court today with deliberations having already begun among the jury.

"This is scandalous. They think they will silence our voices with this type of sentence," said Moroccan Association for Human Rights activist Fatna Bik.

The lyrics to his offending song, "Dogs of the State", accuse, "You are paid to protect the citizens, not to steal their money/Did your commander order you to take money from the poor?"

Allow me a moment to be preemptive.

I've read the comments on a re-posting of the story on Yahoo! OMG. Please, spare me the pleas that the U.S. needs to intervene more here and take a stand against this sort of thing. No. Regardless of what you think of the checkered U.S. relationship with Islamic nations, you don't get to cry a river about the U.S. "policing the world" and "forcing their values on everyone" and then plea for intervention when it suits your distinct values. It's either their culture and laws in which we have no business interfering, or we have a responsibility to "human rights" that other peoples may or may not define differently from how Americans perceive personal freedoms.

It matters not which side you're on. But pick one and show some conviction in it. When you pick up one of the stick - such as, the stick of meddling to shift other nations' domestic policies to ones that are peachy-keen with us - you also pick up the other.