By Pascale Harter, Stringer, Morocco, 13 April 2004

Fifty percent of the population work in the police force. The other fifty percent work for the police force. So goes the popular saying in Morocco and it’s not far off the mark.

As I leave my apartment building in central Rabat, pairs of shifting eyes examine a cigarette butt on the ground, glance at me, look up and down the road, glance back at me, and follow me down the street.

Sometimes I can’t tell which are the secret police paid to stand outside the apartments of foreign journalists and which are just Moroccan men staring at a blonde girl – I could have the face of a pitbull terrier and I would still be stared at for being the one blonde head in a sea of brown and black ones.

(I even caught myself following a blonde woman through the market the other day out of inescapable curiosity.)

But I am beginning to get a feel for who "they" are, and it’s not just their fondness for faux suede jackets that gives them away. Like the Dementors in the Harry Potter books, you feel the presence of Morocco’s secret police before you see them.

Mind your own business

They may be looking the other way, but you can feel every grain of their concentration fixed on you like a laser-beam.

During the reign of the late King Hassan II the secret police were responsible for ‘disappearing’ thousands of citizens caught saying the wrong thing. Moroccans have grown up instinctively being able to tell a secret policeman from 100 metres.

In Rabat, Morocco’s administrative capital and home to the new king, the streets are infested with secret police. They are to Rabat what rats are to London. Consequently people in Rabat are always hurrying past minding their own business.

When the BBC asks for vox pops my heart sinks and I set about planning strategies for assailing people in shops and behind doorways. I used to stand on the pavement with my microphone trying to get people to give me their point of view on this or that.

I could have been doing the Pepsi Cola Challenge and people would still scurry past afraid of getting in trouble if they gave the wrong answer.

The sound of silence

As Morocco prepared to meet Tunisia in the final of the African Cup of Nations I got taken to the police station for asking people who they thought would win. Outside a mosque in Casablanca a tinted-windowed jeep screeched to a halt, seven police surrounded me and barked questions.

My crime was to have asked a French couple what they thought of Casablanca as a tourist destination. I once took a photo of a homeless boy and was briskly escorted to the nearest police station by one sergeant and two ‘civilians’.

Things are getting better though. The new king is more relaxed and few doubt his sincerity in wanting change. But one new man doesn’t turn around an old system.

A visiting Italian journalist shouted across a hotel bar: "Do you like the king?"

The men in fake suede jackets fell silent.

The barman’s face froze. "Yes, we love King Mohammed VI; may Allah keep him safe."

But the glass he was polishing had cracked in his hand.

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