15 December 2004
IFEX MEMBERS CALL ATTENTION TO HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
As the host of the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), Tunisia would like the international community to believe that it is a leader in providing access to information and promoting human rights. But IFEX members tell a different story. They say Tunisian authorities employ brutal methods of silencing political dissidents, human rights advocates, journalists and Internet users.
Human Rights Watch says on 11 December 2004, police in Tunis used force to prevent people from attending a meeting of the National Council for Liberties in Tunisia (Conseil national pour les libertés en Tunisie, CNLT), a leading human rights organisation. Two CNLT members were brutally assaulted.
The attacks came a day after Tunisia's state-controlled press marked International Human Rights Day by trumpeting President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's achievements.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) says while the Tunisian government has a "deplorable" record on freedom of expression, the organisation has no plans to boycott the WSIS in Tunis in November 2005. "We shall go to Tunis to express solidarity with Tunisian journalists and we shall still challenge the Tunisian government," IFJ says.
Tunisia is hosting the second phase of the WSIS, a UN-sponsored conference aimed at discussing ways of bridging the "digital divide" separating rich and poor countries.
With much of the country's media under state control, independent journalists and political dissidents have turned to the Internet to spread information and communicate with the outside world. Not surprisingly, the government has imposed harsh sanctions on those who criticise authorities or use the Internet to find information otherwise banned in Tunisia.
On 8 December, an appeals court upheld the prison sentences of eight Internet users who were convicted earlier this year of using the Internet to promote terrorism. Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) says the Internet users - most of them young men in their twenties - were reportedly tortured in detention and forced to confess that they belonged to a terrorist group linked to Al-Queda, although no evidence was ever presented in court.
Six individuals - Hamza Mahrouk, Amor Farouk Chelandi, Amor Rached, Abdel-Ghaffer Guiza, Aymen Mecharek and Ridha Hadj Brahim - have each been sentenced to 13-year jail terms. Two individuals who live abroad - Ayoub Sfaxi and Tahar Guemir - have been sentenced in absentia to 26-year jail terms. RSF says the trial was marked by "serious irregularities," including the court's refusal to hear the defendants' claims that they had been tortured.
Visit:
- Human Rights Watch: http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2004/12/14/tunisi9841.htm
- RSF: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=12080
- IFJ: http://www.ifj.org/default.asp?Index=2823&Language=EN
- CNLT: http://welcome.to/cnlt
- WSIS Official Site: http://www.itu.int/wsis/
- Amnesty International: http://tinyurl.com/3qkcy
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