8 March 2006
JOURNALIST, INTERNET DISSIDENTS RELEASED; REPRESSION CONTINUES
The IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG) has welcomed the release of journalist Hamadi Jebali and six young Internet users who were among 1,600 prisoners granted pardons by Tunisian President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali on 25 February 2006.
However, the TMG says freedom of expression continues to be heavily repressed in the country and it is calling for the release of other dissidents who remain imprisoned, including human rights defender Mohammed Abbou.
Jebali is the former editor of "Al-Fajr", the now-defunct weekly newspaper of the banned Islamist party Al-Nahda. He spent more than 15 years in prison.
The six young men, mostly in their early twenties, had been sentenced in April 2004 to 19 years and three months in prison for "forming a gang with the objective of planning bombings, theft and stocking explosives."
Dubbed the "youth of Zarzis", Abderrazak Bourguiba, Hamza Mahroug, Abdel Ghafar Guiza, Ridha Belhaj Ibrahim, Omar Chelendi and Aymen Mcharek were accused of having links to terrorism. According to Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF), their convictions were based entirely on confessions extracted under duress and based on no real evidence.
The TMG, a coalition of 15 IFEX member groups, says attacks on free expression in Tunisia have escalated in recent weeks. Tunisian authorities have blocked publication of the weeklies "Al-Maoukif" and "Akhbar al Joumhouria". Foreign papers have faced distribution bans, including "Le Monde" and the Dubai-based magazine "al Maraa al Youm".
Despite the repeal of the dépôt legal system, which required copies of Tunisian periodicals to be sent to officials for vetting, the system still applies to the foreign press. It allows the authorities to silence media that criticise the government or raise taboo subjects.
Controls on phones, faxes and the internet are still in place, three months after Tunisia drew international criticism for its repression of civil society activists and journalists during the World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS) in November 2005. Most opposition politicians have had their Internet connections cut off by the state-owned Tunisian Internet Agency since the Summit.
Meanwhile, Mohammed Abbou remains in jail on a highly questionable charge of "assault" for publishing information that "would disturb public order" and for "insulting the judiciary." He is serving a total of five years in prison.
Despite these attacks on free expression, the Tunisian government claims that it upholds press freedoms, calling them a "tangible reality" in the country, notes the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Tunisia is seeking to repair its international image ahead of talks with the European Union and its 50th anniversary independence celebrations next month.
Visit these links:
- IFEX TMG: http://campaigns.ifex.org/tmg
- OLPEC: http://www.observatoire-olpec.org
- CPJ Report on Tunisia: http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2005/tunisia_wsis_05/tunisia_wsis_05.html
- RSF: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=16663
- HRInfo.net: http://www.hrinfo.net/en/reports/2006/pr0301.shtml
(Photo: Hamadi Jebali)
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