Marrakech- On the eve of their flight to Abu Dhabi to cover a private celebration of the Platinum Rikurz Company, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia TV channel MBC, on Oct 29, Moroccan journalists discovered that they had not been allowed to obtain a visa to enter the United Arab Emirates.
Marrakech- On the eve of their flight to Abu Dhabi to cover a private celebration of the Platinum Rikurz Company, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia TV channel MBC, on Oct 29, Moroccan journalists discovered that they had not been allowed to obtain a visa to enter the United Arab Emirates.
MBC had called several Moroccan journalists to take part in the celebration, and cover its activities, but today, the day their plane was supposed to take off, an official from the MBC channel called and apologized to the Moroccans, saying that they were not able to obtain visas for them, as the Emirati authorities had refused to permit the Moroccan journalists to enter its territory, according to Al Ahdath daily.
The same source wrote that “Moroccans are prevented due to the situation of the Gulf countries and Middle East countries that are fighting ISIS in several conflict fronts in Syria and Iraq.”
The MBC official further explained that “the reason the Emiratis gave was the fact that most citizens from Maghrebian countries are undesirable given that a majority of them use the United Arab Emirates as a passage to Syria and Iraq.”
This MBC officials expressed regret, as they confirmed that most of the Moroccan journalists who were being refused visas had already visited the Emirates on many previous occasions.
According to the same source, a Moroccan citizen living in Saudi Arabia told Hespress that he had been denied entry into the United Arab Emirates without any clarification from the authorities, who asked him not to come again without having visa. The incident had happened before to Algerian and Tunisian citizens, who were turned down temporarily from entering the Emirati territory
Djazairess, an online media, reported that, “consular interests of the United Arab Emirates ceased the granting of visas to Algerian citizens who wanted to travel to the Emirates.”
All the previous sources indicated that the decision to prevent Maghrebian people from entering the Emirates was for security reasons.
Edited by Elisabeth Myers
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