rights: stick in hand, tunisia talks freedom

By Stefania Milan (Inter Press Service, Johannesburg)

February 21, 2005: The media freedom group Reporters Without Borders has declared it "ridiculous" that the second phase of the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) should be held in Tunisia later this year.

"Holding the WSIS in Tunisia is simply ridiculous," Julien Pain from Reporters Without Borders (RSF after its French name Reporters sans Frontieres) told IPS. "The summit is going to talk about freedom of expression, in one of the worst countries in the world for human rights."

A delegation of 'cyber-dissidents' from Tunisia, Iran, China and the Maldives registered the RSF protest at the second preparatory conference for the WSIS that began in Geneva Friday. "We would like to put a face to the repression against Internet users in Tunisia and some of the countries that will be parading at the WSIS," Pain said.
The second phase of WSIS is due in Tunis Nov. 16-18. The first phase was held in Geneva in December 2003.

Tunisia is ranked 152nd in the RSF world press freedom index listing 167 countries. RSF says Tunisia's record on limiting Internet freedom is "very serious". The country has been ruled since 1991 by President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was re-elected for a fourth term in October last year, claiming 99 percent of the vote.

The North African country has about 300 state-owned cybercafés, but less than 6 percent of the population can go online. Half the 12 Internet services providers are state-owned; the rest are owned by the President's relatives, RSF reports.

"The censorship is implacable, the authorities close down any dissenting website," RSF member Zouhair Yahyaoui told IPS. "The WSIS final phase being held in Tunisia is an unforgivable slap for Tunisian democrats."

Yahyaoui served a year and a half in jail for running his satirical website tunezine.com. International news and human rights websites are not accessible from Tunisia, RSF says.

In April 2003 nine young net surfers were sentenced to a maximum of 26 years in jail. They were charged under anti-terrorism law passed in 2002 with downloading material from the Internet.

A previous letter addressed to IPS by the Tunisian embassy in Italy said: "No journalist was arrested or detained for charges stemming from his or her journalistic activities... The web sites of such organisations as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other human rights groups are accessible to the public of Tunisia."

Sihem Besendrine, a Tunisian journalist who received a Canadian freedom award last year said the government has banned her newspaper Kalima. Its website has been blocked, and its writers denied recognition as journalists.

"Community and alternative media do not exist in Tunisia, not even on a local scale," Besendrine told IPS. "There are no free radio or television channels. Only two of the 240 newspapers are owned by the independent opposition."

Legally, there is no censorship in Tunisia, she said. "The government censors the press though direct control of legal registration required for each newspaper edition, and state control over advertising resources."

The first Tunisian private channel Hannibal TV owned by businessman Larbi Nasra went on air last week.

Two teams visited Tunisia at the end of January as a part of the WSIS human rights caucus. Their reports were not encouraging.

A group from the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) returned to condemn the "use of torture, imprisonment of individuals for their opinions and media activities, restrictions on movement of human rights activists, and restrictions on the freedom of association."

The second group, the International Federation for Human Rights will present its preliminary findings at the Geneva meeting next week.

"There is no guarantee that Tunisian and international civil society will be able to participate, or carry out normal activities at the WSIS-2," Meryem Marzouki from the human rights caucus said. About 3,300 civil society representatives participated in the first phase of WSIS.

"During the first preparatory conference in Hammamet (Tunisia) in July 2004 the government brought hired people by busloads and had them turn the civil society meetings into chaos," Marzouki told IPS. "More than 10 Tunisian independent NGOs (non-governmental organisations) were denied access to the meetings."

Besendrine has called for a "counter-summit" to be held alongside WSIS to highlight the exclusion of civil society from official negotiations.

But the Tunisian government is not the only 'bad guy' at WSIS, RSF says.

"Countries like China or Iran will head the conference though everybody knows they do not respect basic human rights. We are worried about the power given to these countries to regulate on freedom of expression and the Internet," Pain told IPS.

"There are currently more than 10 web-bloggers (individuals who post their views on the web) imprisoned in Iran for speaking about homosexuality, freedom and politics," said Iranian blogger and RSF delegate Jay Bakht. He has been campaigning for his association Penlog against the Iranian government's Internet filtering policies.

President Ben Ali has stressed the "inclusive character" of WSIS and said Tunisia will be "faithful to its time-honoured tradition of hospitality."