Sean O Siochru from Communication Rights in the Information Society admitted that the status of human rights in Tunisia is not the worst in the whole world but he said that as long as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was being held there in November 2005 it was expected that the authorities would exhaust every effort to guarantee freedom of expression.
Instead, "the responsibility of assaulting local human rights activists was taken upon by members of the plainclothes police, and these assaults led the organizers of the Citizen's Summit on the Information Society to go on protest on Tuesday instead of looking for a place to host their summit." (3)
Civil society in Tunisia
Between 1992 and 1993, more than 1400 members of the Constitutional Democratic Rally, the ruling party in Tunisia, joined the Tunisian League for Human Rights, raising questions about the sudden resurrection and the sudden embracement of human rights values and concepts.
The reader will find the answer in the following part.
"The Tunisian League for Human Rights was denied the right to hold its sixth annual conference and was denied access to its main building in Tunisia; only the executive members of the association are allowed to enter the offices. The association branches were closed to the public and the elected members of the association. The legal case filed against the executive body of the association was adjourned for the second time to January 2007. The authorities made contacts with embassies of a number of countries in Tunisia and threatened to sever diplomatic relations with these countries if its representatives continued to meet Tunisian human rights activists, the authorities stressed specifically about any meetings with members of the Tunisian League for Human Rights based on legal suits filed against it and instead of these threats a number of workers in different embassies visited the League's headquarters to express their support."(4)
Yet this is relatively new information and God only knows what was happening during the nineties.
Naguib Hosny, one of the most public figures in Tunisia, was deprived from his right to practice his profession as a lawyer. He was also prohibited from traveling and his passport was confiscated after he discussed the human rights situations in Tunisia with the media in 1998.
Mohammed Mowada was questioned after his return from Europe and meeting with European human rights activists and members of parliament in 1998. He was also accused of practicing subversive activities, and he was under arbitrary custody.
The vice-president of the Tunisian League for Human Rights Khamis Kosila was sentenced to two years in prison for issuing a statement in which he criticized the government's policies on human rights. His son was prohibited from traveling to Cairo to receive a human rights award from an Egyptian human rights organization.
Radia Nasrawy, a lawyer specializing in human rights issues, who defends political prisoners and victims of the state's oppression, is also a founding member of the Association Against Torture in Tunisia. Nasrawy was the first lawyer to have membership in the Law Council and membership in the International Organization Against Torture. She also assumed a number of monitoring tasks with Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the International Federation for Human Rights, and the European Missions. For more than 25 years Nasrawy was a target for police harassment, threats and raids at her workplace. She also received an order restricting her movement, and her family members and her lawyers suffered from harassment too. The police broke into her office on three separate incidents and she also suffered from physical assaults in a number of occasions. Her e-mil messages were intercepted, her phones were wiretapped, an intermittent security presence was stationed in front of her house and in 2002 her husband, Hamma Alhomamy, the political activist was detained and was suspended for three years for his political opinions.(5)
Doctor Moncef Marzouki, the former vice-president of the Tunisian League for Human Rights was fired and prevented from teaching medicine in the city of Sousa. He founded, with a number of human rights activists, the National Council for Freedoms in Tunisia in 1999. He was detained several times, including one time when he was detained in 1994 but released after a personal request from Nelson Mandela.
All in all, Tunisia breaks the record in the number of organizations denied the right to work in Tunisia. There are seven significant organizations, including the National Council for Freedoms in Tunisia, the International Association for Political Prisoners, the Tunisian Association Against Torture and the Observatory for Press Freedoms, Publishing and Creation in Tunisia.
Freedom of Opinion, Expression and the Press:
On April 3rd, 2000, Tunisian Journalist Tawfik Ben Brik launched a hunger strike in protest against the closure of the Sabar publishing house and the confiscation of his passport. In the spring of 1999, Ben Brik was subject to broken arm at the hands of non-uniformed police officers. Due to the international support Ben Brik received, the Tunisian president said that he also wanted to go on a hunger strike because he was "sad to know people of this kind exist in Tunisia" and he gave his orders to return Ben Brik's phone service.
Ben Ali made a comment about the Tunisian government saying, "Why don't the Tunisian newspapers cover Ben Brik's hunger strike - at least with four lines so people won't look for the news outside?" He also said that he was reading the Tunisian newspapers and found them "repetitious in terms of news, photography and editorials."(6)
Certainly the Tunisian president wasn't serious, although what he said was true but it wasn't for actual usage, since any Tunisian newspaper's attempts to break away from the authorities' grip will face a similar fate as other newspapers like Al-Mokaf, Al-Akhbar, Al-Gomhoriya, Al-Fajr, and Al-Maghrib magazine. All these newspapers faced prohibition, confiscation and harassment, which was intended to hide the truth from the Tunisian citizens. Foreign newspapers didn't receive better treatment from the censor like Le Monde and the U.A.E.-based Woman Today.
Censorship went further to even harass government newspapers such as the monthly cultural paper Al-hyat published by the Tunisian Ministry of Culture. It wasn't unusual then that the International Federation of Journalists decided in 2004 to suspend the membership of the Tunisian Journalists' Syndicate, which is the Tunisian government controlled union, for rewarding the President with its press freedom award for his role in that field at a time when the Tunisian press lacked all concepts of independence and impartiality. World press freedom organizations strongly criticized the Tunisian press.
The government's grip kept on tightening on the press, leading to an unusual situation never before seen in many Arab countries. This situation became a hallmark of the Tunisian press as mentioned in the report of the October 18th movement,(7) which noted that Tunisian newspapers used or were "coerced to use" a blacklist including many leaders of political parties and civil society. Names on this list are shunned by the press, they can't express their opinions or have their photos published. The surprising thing is that the list gets bigger and bigger every day. The list includes many names of journalists and human rights activists, such as:
* Ahmed Naguib Alshaby, the secretary general of the Democratic Progressive Party
* Hamma Alhomamy, the official spokesperson of the Tunisian Workers Communist party
* Rashid AlGhanoshy, the head of Al-Nahda movement
* Mostafa Ben Gafar, the secretary general of the Democratic block for labor and freedoms
* Mokhtar Trifi, the head of the Tunisian League for Human Rights
* Mohammed Alnoury, the head of the International Association for Political Prisoners
* Radia Nasrawy, the head of the Tunisian Association Against Torture
* Sihem Bensedrine, the official spokesperson of the National Council for Freedoms
* Ali Ben Salim, the head of the Veteran resistance members society
* Galool Azouna, the head of the Free Writers Society
* Mohammed Talby a thinker and the head of the observatory of freedom of creation and publishing
* Mohammed Al-Sharafy, the former Minister of Education
* Moncef Marzouki, the head of the Conference for the Republic party
* Albasheer Alseed, the former head of the lawyers syndicate
* Abdelraziq Alhomamy the head of the Democratic National Labour party
* Mohammed Alkeelany, of the Democratic communists
* Abdelqader Alzitony, the head of the Green Tunisia party
* Kamel Jendoubi, the Committee for cherishing freedoms and human rights in Tunisia
* Khamees Alshamary, the former vice-president of the Tunisian League for Human Rights
* Abdelrazek Alkeelany, Member in the National Council for Lawyers.(8)
That was an idea about the conditions of the press in Tunisia. What about the journalists' conditions?
Tunisia may be the only country in the whole world that every time you make a search on one of its well-known journalists on any famous and non-famous search engines you will be surprised that there are only two things in common: either this journalist is jailed or beaten or that he or she is writing from his or her arbitrary exile out of Tunisia. In other words, the independent journalist or an outspoken figure is victimized by a repressive regime, or, this journalist has left Tunisia to another place where expressing your opinion is not equivalent to prison and harassment.
The October 18th movement mentioned in its report a list of names of the journalists deprived from writing in Tunisia. Those writers' work can be found only through electronic journalism means. The list includes:
Abdellatif Alforaty
Salah Aldin Algorshy
Kamel Labidi
Lotfy Hajji
Omar Sahabo
Mohamed Fourati
Slim Boukdhir
Abdelwahab Alhany
Altahir Alobidy
Noor Aldin Aloidy
Alhady Yahmad
Shahrizad Okasha
Abdellah Alzowary
Hindda Alarfawy
Taoufik Bin Brik
Sihem Bensedrine
Naziha Rejiba (Um Ziad)
Lotfi Hidouri
Sami Nasr
Souhair Belhassen
Kamal Aldeif
Ali Borawy
Ahmad Alkadidy(9)
An independent Tunisian journalists' syndicate is under siege
On May 2004, a number of Tunisian journalists established an independent syndicate for journalists in Tunisia in order to save the Tunisian press from this plummeting condition. The establishing body was headed by the Tunisian journalist Lotfi Hajji and many organizations concerned with freedom of press and civil society organizations declared their support to this new body. Yet the severe repressive measure the government took never stopped, starting from preventing the group from holding its founding conference and physical assault launched against many of the new syndicate's members. These measures led many Tunisian journalists abroad to issue a declaration of support for the right to have an independent union for Tunisian journalists, and this declaration was signed by many Tunisian journalists including:
1. Mohamed Krishan/Qatar
2. Amal Wannas Alzein/Qatar
3. Galol Bin Hamida/France
4. Nabeel Alrihany/ Qatar
5. Altayib Ma'aly/Canada
6. Alhady Yahmad/ France
7. Mohamed Borika/Canada
8. Abdelatif Bin Salim/France
9. Khalid Showkat/ the Netherlands
10. Bassam Boniny/ France
11. Altahir Alobidy/ France
12. Safwa Essa/ Switzerland
13. Ali Borawy/ France
14. Samy Bin Gharbiya/ the Netherlands
15. Gamal Alhany/ France
16. Shihab Bel Reesh/ Switzerland
17. Galal Alwarghy/ Britain
18. AbdelWahab Alhany/ France(10)
The independence of the Tunisian judiciary is now something from the past
Early on July 2001, Judge Almokhtar Al'yihyawi sent a letter to the Tunisian President Zine Alabedeen Ben Ali, asking him to respect the article in the constitution which provides respect for the judiciary and its independence. A few days later the letter came back unopened to Judge Al'yihyaway, despite the fact he didn't write his address on the letter. The judge published that letter on a number of websites, which led to his receiving an official letter from the Tunisian Ministry of Justice suspending him without pay.
Almokhtar Al'yihyawi went back to work on August of the same year, yet the Tunisian Ministry of Justice insisted on showing its real face by firing the judge on December 2001. He hasn't had his job back since then.
Almokhtar Al'yihyawi suffered a severe beating a month after he was fired, yet the wall of silence hiding the truth behind the reality of the independence of the judiciary in Tunisia was broken. It was revealed that it is in the hands of the authorities, receiving its orders only.
The following incident proves clearly how the Tunisian government, represented by the Ministry of Interior, despises and ridicules the Tunisian judiciary: on February 2nd, 2002 after the leftist opposition figure Hamma Alhomamy and a number of his comrades submitted themselves to the Tunisian judiciary asking for a fair trial after escaping for a long time after an unjust trial held in absentia. Another trial was held and during this trial, members of the police stormed into the court and started beating Alhomamy and a number of his comrades severely without respecting the sanctity of the courtroom. Hamma Alhomamy and his comrades didn't receive the justice they were seeking and they were sentenced again to prison for a number of years. Alhomamy was freed after a huge international and Arab campaign. The Tunisian government in order to save face they made his release based on "medical grounds.
