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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
members of his family known for their opposition to President Ben Ali's autocratic rule.
Jalel and Nejib Zoghlami are the brothers of journalist Taoufik Ben Brik who five years ago went on a long hunger strike to defend his right to freedom of movement and expression.
Jalel's wife, Ahlem Belhaj is the chair of the Tunisian Association for Democratic Women (ATFD). Tunisian human rights groups reported that she has been harassed and denied the right to pay visits to her imprisoned husband with her son since September 2004.
2. Blocking of websites, including news and information websites, and police surveillance of e-mails and Internet cafes.
President Ben Ali has expressed time and again his commitment to the development of the Internet while websites are being blocked and young people exploring the Web harassed, arrested, tortured and sentenced to heavy prison terms following unfair trials.
The government and state-run media constantly trumpet that access to the Internet is "free and a fact of life" without any mention of the high price internautes like Zouhaier Yahyaoui or others have paid, and continue to pay for trying to access forbidden sites or to criticize President Ben Ali and his regime on the Internet.
More Tunisians have been arrested for expressing themselves on the Internet during the past three years than for views carried by the print media since the country's independence, 48 years ago. The most symbolic case that gives a clear idea about the lack of tolerance of freedom of expression on the Internet on the part of the Tunisian government is the case of Zouhaier Yahyaoui.
Zouhaier Yahyaoui established his online magazine TuneZine (www.TuneZine.com), in mid-2001, after learning how "to get through blocked sites" to quench his thirst for information and communication. His problems started after he posted on TuneZine an open letter sent in July 2001 to President Ben Ali by his uncle Judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui. In this letter, which the post office returned to the sender under the pretext that the address was unknown, and to which the state-controlled media turned a blind eye, Judge Yahyaoui denounced the lack of independence of the judiciary in the country.
Zouhaier Yahyaoui was arrested on 4 June 2002 in an Internet café in Tunis. He was tortured and falsely accused of robbing his "employer," the owner of the Internet café, at a time when he was in fact jobless. He was also charged with "spreading false news" and sentenced to 28 months in prison. He said he was tortured and denied visits by his family and lawyer while in police detention. "I was handcuffed and ill-treated and no one knew where I was for five days," he said.
Internet cafés, known in Tunisia as Publinets, are under tight control by both the Ministry of Telecommunications and the Ministry of the Interior. Access to these public Cybercafes may be denied by the owner who is also entitled to check anything that is saved on a disk by a customer. It is the owner's duty to call the police in case the content of what is saved is deemed to be a problem. Very often, computers available in Internet cafés are not equipped with disc drives or USB plugs. Internet users are asked quite often asked to show their ID to the owner or manager of the Internet café. The owners of public phones, faxes, and photocopiers are also required by the police to keep a watchful eye on their customers and not to hesitate to ask for their IDs.
Yahyaoui was released on parole at the end of 2003 after serving most of his prison sentence. His courage and local and international campaigns of solidarity helped end his ordeal. But it is unlikely that this young and intelligent university graduate will find a job in a country where the job market, including the private sector, often awaits the green light from the police to offer employment to young job seekers.
Yahyaoui said some of his friends who used to contribute to his online magazine have taken refuge in western countries because they felt Tunisia was no longer a safe place to live in. He added that, "Anyone who says anything against Ben Ali is considered a terrorist or a traitor." President Ben Ali and the state-controlled media often accuse rights defenders and political activists of "treason" and of "serving foreign interests."
During the IFEX-TMG mission to Tunisia in January 2005, direct testing was carried out of Internet blocking. The tests carried out through Internet Service Provide 3S GlobalNet indicated at least 20 news and information websites were blocked by Internet filtering systems.
A list of these sites is provided at Annex 2. These sites are all available outside Tunisia and none appear to carry material which could justify blocking on the basis of internationally agreed freedom of expression standards. What they have in common is that they provide information and points of view which are independent and which are sometimes critical of the Tunisian government.
We found similar patterns of website blocking through other Internet Service Providers when tested through proxy servers and this suggests that website blocking is specific, is systematic and is centrally controlled.
A possible exception may apply to Internet Service Providers whose Internet access is not only through the Tunisian Internet Agency but also through satellite.
The Internet blocking appears to be performed by the software application SmartFilter Version 3. Smartfilter is an application developed and marketed by a US company, Secure Computing. This application provides a series of website categories which may be switched on or off. In addition it allows for unique blocking of specified URLs.
The Tunisian use of Smartfilter appears to have the categories of nudity, pornography and anonymisers switched on. In addition a number of unique URLs are switched on to ensure website blocking. These include the news and information websites listed at Annex 2.
The technology provides flexibility for specific URLs to be switched on or off at short notice and we gathered anecdotal evidence that accessibility of some websites does vary from time to time. For years, for instance, the sites of international human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, and the Committee to Protect Journalists have been systematically blocked. So have been the sites of foreign newspapers such as French dailies Le Monde and Liberation and the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine and the monthly Le Monde Diplomatique. These sites were available in January 2005 while others, mainly those giving alternative Tunisia perspectives on Tunisia, remained blocked.
Amnesty International-Tunisia reported that the websites of the London-based international human rights group and of some of its sections in countries including France and Canada were no longer blocked at the end of January. Its own site, AI-Tunisia, was reported by members of the board of AI-Tunisia to be briefly accessible during the visit paid to Tunisia by the IFEX delegation. Members of the Board deemed this "not purely coincidental."
On 30 January Fathi Chamkhi, spokesperson for the Tunisian section of the Rally for an International Alternative of Development (le Rassemblement pour une alternative internationale de developpement, RAID-Tunisie), also known as the Tunisian section of ATTAC, reported that the site of his group can now be viewed in Tunisia for the first time in 5 years.
Chamkhi said in a press released carried by the daily online magazine Tunisnews, "the recent visit to Tunisia of the IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group "obviously contributed to this development." He added that the former campaigns to free Zouhaier Yahyaoui from prison and the current ones to release the Youth of Zarzis and Ariana also contributed to the decision to stop blocking the website of RAID-ATTAC Tunisia. So did the struggle of Tunisian independent NGOs and journalists that "helped lift part of the veil which hides the Tunisian regime's practices which stifle liberties."
Such pressure was reported to have led the government to temporarily lift blocking of local and international rights groups and newspapers and magazines particularly when Tunisia hosted international meetings and visitors.
Different independent editors whose websites are posted outside the country said the reasons why the internet is so tightly controlled by ISPs close to the regime, including President Ben Ali's daughter and the state-run Tunisian Internet Agency, are purely political.
Editors of online magazines resorted to the Internet because of the absence of independent journalism and because the government has failed so far to stifle freedom of expression completely on the Internet thanks to proxies and pressure from the international community.
Sihem Ben Sedrine, Naziha Rejiba, co-editors of Kalima and Nadia Omrane, editor of Alternatives Citoyenne (Citizens' Alternatives), used to contribute to independent papers like Ar Rai (The Opinion), Le Phare (The Lighthouse), and Le Maghreb, which were forced by the government to close down several years ago.
According to the Tunisian Human Rights League, the tight police surveillance of the Internet and the harassment and imprisonment of Zouhair Yahyaoui and Abdallah Zouari has had a negative impact on the rate of Internet use.
"In Latin America the rate is 1,000 Internet users per 10,000 inhabitants and in South and East Asia it is 2,000 per 10,000 inhabitants. In Tunisia, this rate is 750 per 10,000 inhabitants," said the LTDH adding that most Internet users in Tunisia work for the government and personal accounts amount to only 7.5% of Internet users. The LTDH also reported that there are 0.3 Internet cafes per 10,000 inhabitants in Tunisia, while in neighboring Algeria there are 4 times as many, i.e.: 1.3 Internet cafes per 10,000 inhabitants.
The Tunisian government has its own statistics: "900,000 Internet users; 12 ISPs, including 5 belonging to the private sector; 310 Internet cafes at the end of 2004."
3. Blocking of the distribution of books and publications.
The Tunisian book market is relatively small. It is divided between French and Arabic language texts. There are over 40 publishers in Tunisia, both private and public. Most of them are small publishers. The largest ones are: Cérès Editions (private), Sud Editions (private), Maison Arabe du Livre (public).
Small publishers often faced fiscal controls as a form of intimidation and pressure and scores of their books were blocked at the "legal depot." So was recently a book on sexuality by a female writer.
As required by the Press Code, the printer deposits a certain number of books but never gets the "récépissé" (receipt) from the authorities. Thus, the book in question is withheld from distribution even after completing the formal procedure of the legal depot. Another book by the son of Mohieddine Klibi, one of the figures of the national struggle for independence has never been authorized.
Mohamed Talbi's books on Islam are continuously blocked in the "legal depot." Talbi, a former Dean of the Faculty of arts in Tunis and one of the most prominent scholars and advocates of dialogue between religions and of freedom of expression has also seen all of his books, released years ago by the Tunisian censors, disappear from book stores. His latest book "Penseur Libre en Islam" (Free Thinker in Islam) published in France in 2003 by Albin Michel is still denied access to the Tunisian market.
His French publisher sent him 25 copies, but the Ministry of the Interior confiscated them, without giving him a receipt.
"Nearly two years ago, I asked at the Ministry of the Interior humbly and politely for a document explaining that my book is banned. They refused, claiming that the book might be allowed to be on sale one day," said this elderly scholar.
There is no such thing as a free flow of books and publications among Arab States, or from, say, France to Tunisia. The Tunisian authorities carefully censor foreign books that come into the country.
Talbi said: "One day the customs seized a book I bought in Rome called 'le catechisme de l'Eglise catholique' and later asked me what's the meaning of catechism?"
Talbi, who chairs an unauthorized freedom of expression group called OLPEC (Observatoire de la liberte de presse, d'edition et de creation), questioned the use of international freedom of expression groups' presence at the WSIS, if Tunisians like him are denied free access to the local media.
Moncef Marzouki, former head of the LTDH and spokesperson of CNLT and currently head of an unauthorized political group, the Congress for the Republic (Congres pour la Republique) has seen his books vanish from Tunisian book stores. Even those dealing with human rights and health education and some of his latest books on the struggle for democracy and human rights in the Arab world have been published outside Tunisia, including Morocco.
Several books criticizing the Tunisian government's poor human rights record, including a recent book by Sihem Ben Sedrine and Omar Mestiri titled "L'Europe et ses despotes" (Europe and its Despots), have been published in France. At Tunis Carthage Airport books brought by Tunisians, particularly rights activists and dissidents are often confiscated by the customs agents. Ben Sedrine has seen more than once recently copies of her book confiscated.
There are no clear guidelines in terms of censorship and preventing distribution of books and publications. Such arbitrary behaviour has undoubtedly dealt an unprecedented blow to creativity and artistic life as self-censorship seems to have become second nature among Tunisians.
There is no rational explanation, for instance, of the confiscation in late November 2004 at Tunis Carthage Airport of ten books brought from Cairo by Neji Merzouk, member of the board of the LTDH and head of a small publishing group called "Samed" based in Sfax, Tunisia's second largest city. Aside from the Annual Report of the Cairo-based Arab Human Rights Organization, the remainder of the nine confiscated books had nothing to do with Tunisia. Some were very critical of radical Islam, which the Tunisian government claims to be combating. Among the confiscated books was also "Emarat Yacoubian" (The Yacoubian Building), a best-seller by Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany!
Two books in Arabic published by Merzouk's group, "Samed", have, since 2003, been awaiting authorization to make it to the book stores. The first one is a novel by Nejib Saadaoui titled "Mesbah El-Jarboue: a Hero from the Land of Fig and Olive Trees"; the second one is a collection of poems written by Kamel Ghali titled "Beautiful Doubt."
In 1996, the police stormed Samed publishing house in Sfax and later the same day his home in Chebba and seized 12,869 copies of 13 books which had been authorized for sale years ago by the government. His petition dated 23 May 1996 to the Minister of the Interior, protesting this abuse of power remains unanswered.
According to the banned League of Free Writers, "Samed" is the last Tunisian "combat publishing house" which may play a role similar to the role of Sihem Ben Sedrine's defunct Aloès publishing house, "although to a much lesser extent." Aloès publishing house was broken into twice in December 1999 by individuals thought to be members of the political police, and all its computer equipment was taken.
Hafidha Chekir, a law professor and human rights defender, saw in 2000 her book "Les Droits des femmes entre les textes et les resistances" (Women's Rights between the Legislative Texts and Resistance to Change) put on sale in Tunis by Chama Publishing House. Nearly six months later, the book was suddenly withdrawn from book stores by the authorities under the pretext that it needed the "Depot legal"! Ironically this book has not been recently withdrawn from the shelves of the library of the Faculty of Law and Political Science where Chekir has been teaching for more than 25 years.
Chekir's book is based on the research and findings of her doctoral thesis for which, in 1998, she was awarded the Human Rights Prize by the French Society for International Law.
In 2004 the Tunis-based Arab Institute for Human Rights sent to the printer a manuscript in Arabic written by Hafidha Chekir entitled "Guide about the participation of Arab women in Political Life." The book is still awaiting authorisation following the customary "Depot legal."
This arbitrary behaviour in the field of publishing and distribution of books and publications often in line with the official discourse on human rights, modernity and radical Islam has been gaining ground since President Ben Ali's coup, which Tunisian journalists are instructed to refer to as "the change."
The Tunisian section of Amnesty International waited nearly five years after completing the formalities related to the "depot legal" before being allowed to use a guide book on human rights education. This guide, prepared at the end of the 1990s in cooperation with the Norwegian section of Amnesty International, would not have been released without an international campaign backed by some influential sections of the movement.
For years AI-Tunisia has seen thousands of documents, including Amnesty International's Annual Report, blocked at customs, its phone and fax lines frequently cut off and its mail regularly stolen from its letter box. "International pressure can bear fruit and help loosen the grip of this autocratic and perverse state which stifles basic liberties," said a former chair of AI-Tunisia.
The Tunisian Association of Democratic Women has been waiting since 1994 for the authorities to allow the release of a book titled "Violence against Women." The book is a compilation of papers and remarks presented at an international seminar held in Tunis in November 1993. A poster designed by this independent and beleaguered association to raise women's rights awareness and protect them from violence has also been withheld since 1993 at a printing house following instructions from the authorities.
Despite all the obstacles and harassment facing independent publishers, the government has, for years, been discussing a draft convention with the Tunisian Publishers Union (L'Union des Editeurs Tunisiens, UET) aimed apparently at further controlling the publishing sector. The UET which was established in 1972 but remained rather dormant for more than a decade, began to demonstrate interest in the promotion of reading and books through an increased participation in various book fairs (Paris, Arab world). Its current membership is nearly 40 publishers representing 70% of the Tunisian publishing industry.
The draft convention defines guidelines on ways of establishing a publishing house and distributing "cultural books" and describes sanctions which might be inflicted on publishers. Sanctions could go as far as closing down the publishing house in cases where the minister came to the conclusion that the publisher "committed a professional mistake or ethical violation."
The circle of freedom of expression is narrowing, not only among publishers, but also amid prominent historians committed to scientific research, such as Abdel Jelil Temimi founder and head of the Temimi Foundation for Scientific Research and Information (www.refer.org/fondationtemimi). This foundation has earned a reputation during the past years for crossing "red lines' by shedding light on the recent history of Tunisia and issues such as censorship in the Arab world. The papers and conclusions of its first conference on censorship in Arab countries held in 2000 are still awaiting the green light from the Tunisian authorities to be made public. This negative attitude on the part of the Tunisian government did not dissuade the Temimi Foundation from organizing, at the end of November 2004, its second conference on Censorship in the Arab world.
The Temimi Foundation, which is enjoying a margin of freedom of expression unparalleled in the state-run research centers and universities, has been waiting for nearly ten months for the government's decision to allow the release of a book containing testimonies on the confrontation between the ruling party and the Tunisian General Workers Union (UGTT) in 1978, known as the "Black Thursday", which led to scores of dead and wounded among the population. Apparently the censors did not appreciate the testimony of one of the main protagonists during that crisis, Taieb Baccouche, former Secretary General of the UGTT and currently president of the Arab Institute for Human Rights.
Furthermore, several books by Tunisians forced into exile, including Ahmed Manai, Sadri Khiari, Taher Labidi, Olfa Lamloum, Taoufik Medini, Mohamed Mzali and Rached Ghannouchi, have not been allowed to make it to the Tunisian state-controlled book market. Neither have books on Tunisia recently written by French journalists Nicolas Beau and Jean-Pierre Tuquoi and French Academics Michel Camau and Vincent Geisser… or Canadian academic Lise Garon.
4. Restrictions on the freedom of association, including the right of organizations to be legally established and to hold meetings.
Despite 8,000 officially-acknowledged associations in Tunisia, only a dozen associations are really independent, such as the Tunisian League for Human Rights, The Tunisian Association for Democratic Women, the Tunisian Section of Amnesty International and the unacknowledged National Council for Liberties in Tunisia, the League of Free Writers and the Tunis Centre for the Independence of the Judiciary. The remaining thousands of associations which the government and the state-run media ironically call NGOs are tightly controlled by the Ministry of the Interior and the ruling party. Even members of the board of sports and cultural clubs have to be approved by the authorities.
Most of the associations the authorities send to international gatherings as "NGOs" are government sponsored organisations which can not be considered independent of the ruling powers.
Truly independent associations must work clandestinely. Their communications (mail, email, fax) are controlled and it is not uncommon for them and their leading figures and members to receive viruses or groups of 200 or 300 identical e-mails from unknown users, which blocks their e-mail servers.
Their mails and parcels are very often opened or do not reach the final recipients. Phone conversations are tapped and freedom of movement is very often infringed whether internally or externally.
All the independent NGOs the IFEX delegation met seek legal recognition from the Tunisian government. Legal status would allow them to act with greater freedom. In other words, the situation of freedom of expression in Tunisia, including freedom to publish, will not improve as long as independent NGOs are not officially acknowledged by the authorities. Effective acknowledgement is a step - albeit a necessary one- on the road to better freedom of expression in Tunisia.
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Copyright © 2002 EOHR. All rights reserved. 