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Tunisia: Freedom of Expression under Siege
Report of the
IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group
on the conditions for participation in the World Summit on the Information Society, to be held in Tunis, November 2005
February 2005
Tunisia: Freedom of Expression under Siege
CONTENTS:
Executive Summary
A. Background and Context
B. Facts on the Ground
1. Prisoners of opinion
2. Internet blocking
3. Censorship of books
4. Independent organisations
5. Activists and dissidents
6. Broadcast pluralism
7. Press content
8. Torture
C. Conclusions and Recommendations
Annex 1 - Open Letter to Kofi Annan
Annex 2 - List of blocked websites
Annex 3 - List of banned books
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) is a global network of 64 national, regional and international freedom of expression organisations.
This report is based on a fact-finding mission to Tunisia undertaken from 14 to 19 January 2005 by members of the IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group (IFEX-TMG) together with additional background research and Internet testing.
The mission was composed of the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights, International PEN Writers in Prison Committee, International Publishers Association, Norwegian PEN, World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) and World Press Freedom Committee.
Other members of IFEX-TMG are: ARTICLE 19, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), the Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Studies (CEHURDES), Index on Censorship, Journalistes en Danger (JED), Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), and World Association of Newspapers (WAN).
The principle findings of the mission were:
Imprisonment of individuals related to expression of their opinions or media activities.
Blocking of websites, including news and information websites, and police surveillance of e-mails and Internet cafes.
Blocking of the distribution of books and publications.
Restrictions on the freedom of association, including the right of organizations to be legally established and to hold meetings.
Restrictions on the freedom of movement of human rights defenders and political dissidents together with police surveillance, harassment, intimidation and interception of communications.
Lack of pluralism in broadcast ownership, with only one private radio and one private TV broadcaster, both believed to be loyal supporters of President Ben Ali.
Press censorship and lack of diversity of content in newspapers.
Use of torture by the security services with impunity.
The IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG) believes that Tunisia must greatly improve its implementation of internationally agreed freedom of expression and other human rights standards if it is to hold the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis in November 2005.
In particular we urge the Tunisian authorities to:
1. Release Hamadi Jebali, editor of the weekly Al Fajr and hundreds of prisoners like him held for their religious and political beliefs and who never advocated or used violence.
2. End arbitrary administrative sanctions compelling journalist Abdellah Zouari to live nearly 500 km away from his wife and children and guarantee his basic right to freedom of movement and expression.
3. Release the seven cyber dissidents known as the Youth of Zarzis who, following unfair trials, have been sentences to heavy prison terms allegedly for using the Internet to commit terror attacks. During the trials, no evidence of wrongdoing was offered, according to their lawyers and local and international human rights groups.
4. End harassment and assaults on human rights and political activists and their relatives and bring to justice those responsible for ordering these attacks and perpetrating them.
5. Stop blocking websites and putting Internet cafes and Internet users under police surveillance.
6. Release banned books, end censorship, and conform to international standards for freedom of expression.
7. Take action against interference by government employees in the privacy of human rights and political activists and end the withholding of their mail and email.
8. Lift the arbitrary travel ban on human rights defenders and political activists, including Mokhtar Yahyaoui and Mohammed Nouri.
9. Take serious steps toward lifting all restrictions on independent journalism and encouraging diversity of content and ownership of the press.
10. Promote genuine pluralism in broadcast content and ownership including fair and transparent procedures for the award of radio and TV broadcast licences.
11. Allow independent investigation into cases of torture allegedly perpetrated by security forces.
12. Conform to international standards on freedom of association and freedom of assembly and grant legal recognition to independent civil society groups such as the CNLT, the Tunis Center for the Independence of the Judiciary, the League of Free Writers, OLPEC, the International Association to Support Political Prisoners, the Association for the Struggle against Torture, and RAID-ATTAC-Tunisia.
A. BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
Background to the mission
This report is based on a fact-finding mission to Tunisia undertaken from 14 to 19 January 2005 by members of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) together with additional background research and Internet testing. IFEX is an umbrella organization of 64 national, regional, and international groups committed to protecting freedom of expression worldwide.
The mission was composed of the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights, International PEN Writers in Prison Committee, International Publishers Association, Norwegian PEN, World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) and World Press Freedom Committee.
The organizations are part of a group of IFEX members which came together in 2004 to form the Tunisian Monitoring Group (IFEX-TMG). The other members of IFEX-TMG are ARTICLE 19, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) which manages the Toronto-based IFEX, the Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Studies (CEHURDES), Index on Censorship, Journalistes en Danger (JED), the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), and the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). The goal of the IFEX-TMG is to campaign for significant improvements in conditions for freedom of expression in Tunisia as the country prepares itself to host the second phase of the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) to be held in Tunis, in November 2005.
Members of IFEX have taken a close interest in the World Summit on the Information Society since its inception. At their annual meeting, held in Baku, Azerbaijan in June 2004, 31 members of IFEX signed an open letter to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan expressing serious concerns for the second Summit in Tunis and setting out a series of freedom of expression benchmarks (Annex 1).
These concerns were reinforced by experiences at the Tunis Summit Preparatory Committee meeting held in Hammamet, Tunisia in June 2004 when Tunisian government officials and Tunisian government sponsored "NGOs" sought to suppress any discussion of human rights in Tunisia.
In consequence a number of IFEX members involved in the WSIS process took the decision to establish the IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group to observe and report on freedom of expression in Tunisia in the run up to and the period following the Tunis Summit of the WSIS.
This report, the first of the IFEX-TMG, assesses the current state of freedom of expression in Tunisia and makes a series of recommendations for improvement.
Unprecedented since Tunisia's independence from France in 1956, the IFEX-TMG mission of multiple groups advocating freedom of expression came nearly five years after the fact-finding mission to Tunisia conducted by the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Mr. Abid Hussain.
In February 2000, the UN Special Rapporteur characterised the Tunisian media as showing "uniformity of tone" and lack of criticism of government policies. Not only has this situation not improved, but the legislation traditionally used to exert "different kinds of inducements and pressure" on journalists and editors has been amended in the past two years to drastically further restrict freedom of expression.
Tunisians of different political trends, including former ministers, acknowledged that the WSIS could offer invaluable opportunities to inform the international community of the unrelenting attacks on freedom of expression and to campaign for the protection of this basic right before and after the Tunis Summit of the WSIS.
However, many expressed the fear that the Tunisian government, which heavily invests in public relations campaigns and in establishing groups it falsely calls NGOs, would use the WSIS to improve its image while continuing to conceal its poor human rights record.
Official figures place the number of civil society groups at more than eight thousands, but reliable sources maintain that there are less than a dozen truly independent groups. Most of them are not recognized by the authorities and their leading figures are under continuous police surveillance and harassment.
During the six-day mission, members of the IFEX-TMG met with Tunisian writers, publishers, editors, journalists, rights defenders, and academics, as well as government officials and government sponsored organisations.
Throughout the mission members of the delegation were observed by and witnessed in action the ubiquitous plain-clothes police whose job is to monitor and control the freedom of movement of human rights defenders and political dissidents, to harass them, and to closely follow international researchers or reporters looking into these issues.
One member of the mission told Tunisian officials that he had travelled nearly 200 times in recent years in different parts of the world, but had never experienced so much police surveillance!
The majority of the meetings took place in or around the capital, Tunis, however four members of the delegation also flew to southeast Tunisia, near the Libyan border, on 18 January to meet with Abdallah Zouari, a journalist and former political prisoner who has been ordered to live, under constant police surveillance following his release, in a remote small town nearly 500 km away from his wife and children.
These mission members later managed to meet, under the watchful eye of plain-clothed policemen in the Mediterranean city of Zarzis, with most of the parents and relatives of seven young people currently serving heavy prison sentences for simply surfing the Internet, according to local rights groups.
The Tunisian authorities sought repeatedly to obtain the postponement of the mission under different pretexts before arranging meetings for members of the delegation with government officials and offering to arrange others with state agencies and state-sponsored organisations.
Political context
Tunisia was the first country in the Middle East and North Africa to adopt a constitution nearly 145 years ago, in 1860. Its relatively vibrant civil society played a key role in ending the French Protectorate in 1956 and paving the way for the promulgation, a few months later, of the Personal Status Code which granted Tunisian women unparalleled rights in the Arab world.
These unequalled rights for women in the region coupled with huge efforts to promote education and health care and to combat poverty under the country's first president Habib Bourguiba made Tunisia look, more than forty years ago, as one of the most qualified Arab countries to turn into a democracy.
Although implemented more than forty eight years ago, these achievements, particularly in the field of women's rights, are often used today by the Tunisian government whenever its poor human rights record comes under international scrutiny.
The establishment of the Tunisian Human Rights League in 1977, the first of its kind in Africa and the Arab world, and the blossoming of an independent press in the last decade of Bourguiba's lengthy and autocratic rule prompted hope among democracy advocates in Tunisia and the rest of the Arab world.
Many Tunisians thought there was more room for hope when Gen. Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ousted Bourguiba in a bloodless coup on 7 November 1987, promising to lead the country toward democracy.
The release at that time of hundreds of political prisoners and the ratification of international human rights treaties, including the Convention against Torture, and a brief tolerance for political and media pluralism were welcomed by political and rights activists.
Unfortunately, the days of hope were numbered when President Ben Ali started using the civil war in neighbouring Algeria which erupted following the cancellation in January 1992 of the results of the legislative elections, as an excuse to stifle basic rights, mainly freedom of expression.
Opposition and independent papers were closed down and journalists and hundreds of political activists, most of them Islamists, were imprisoned following unfair trials, particularly in the early 1990s. Many of them, including Hamadi Jebali, editor of the Islamist weekly Al-Fajr (the Dawn), are still serving lengthy prison sentences.
Amnesty International adopted most of them as prisoners of conscience and repeatedly maintained that they were imprisoned "solely for the peaceful exercise of their religious or political beliefs."
The leading figures and members of the banned Islamist movement were not the only victims of repression and injustice. Leaders of the banned Tunisian Workers' Communist Party (Parti Communiste des Ouvriers Tunisiens, PCOT), the Movement of Democratic Socialists (Mouvement des Democrates Socialistes, MDS), as well as trade union activists of the Tunisian Workers' General Union (Union Generale Tunisienne du Travail, UGTT) have also been arbitrarily imprisoned during the past decade.
Later, the Tunisian government used the attacks in the USA on 11 September 2001, to further restrict freedom of association, movement, and expression, and to trumpet its support for President George Bush's "global war on terror." A new law criminalizing freedom of expression was passed at the end of 2003 allegedly to support "the international efforts in matters of the fight against terrorism and money laundering." The Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH) said after the promulgation of this law, "the year 2003 has been marked by the promulgation of laws of an unprecedented serious character in terms of their violation of the right to information."
The 1959 Constitution was revised in 2002 following a Soviet-style referendum permitting President Ben Ali to run in October 2004 for a fourth term in office. The revisions to the Constitution removed restrictions which prevented the head of state from serving more than three terms in office, and granted him immunity from prosecution for life and were legislatively hidden behind scores of amendments regarding human rights protection.
During the three previous presidential elections (1989, 1994, and 1999), President Ben Ali was declared winner of the elections by the Ministry of the Interior with more than 99 percent of the vote. In October 2004, he got nearly 95 percent of the vote in an election deemed unfair and boycotted by the most credible opposition groups. Only leading figures in minor political parties sharing 20 per cent of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, largely dominated by the ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally (Rassemblement Constitutionnel Democratique, RCD) are allowed to run for presidential elections.
There are seven minor political parties acknowledged by the authorities. Only the parties most loyal to President Ben Ali have been admitted to the Chamber of Deputies since 1994 and are less subject to harassment.
Elections are routinely characterized by gross irregularities, including voter intimidation and drastic restrictions on the right to freedom of assembly and expression.
International and Regional Obligations
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