[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Tunisia: Democracy Deferred

[Al Kagan]

>To: akagan at uiuc.edu
>Subject: Tunisia: Democracy Deferred
>From: africafocus at igc.org
>Sender: World Wide Web Owner <www at africafocus.org>
>Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 10:38:21 -0800
>
>
>Tunisia: Democracy Deferred 
>
>AfricaFocus Bulletin
>Feb 22, 2004 (040222)
>(Reposted from sources cited below)
>
>Editor's Note 
>
>"This week, President Bush played host to President Zine el-Abidine
>ben Ali of Tunisia, giving this ruthless autocrat a long-coveted
>audience at the White House," writes exiled Tunisian journalist
>Kamel Labidi in the New York Times. "To his credit, Mr. Bush
>rebuked Mr. ben Ali for his violations of press freedom, but the
>United States is sorely mistaken if it believes that democracy and
>the rule of law can ever take hold under leaders like Mr. ben Ali.
>... Tunisia today is one of the world's most efficient police
>states."
>
>The commentary by Labidi, who is also the former director of
>Amnesty International Tunisia, continues, "Since his ouster of
>President Habib Bourguiba in a coup in 1987, Mr. ben Ali has
>quashed virtually all dissent and silenced a civil society that
>once was an example of vibrancy for North Africa and the
>neighboring Middle East" (for full text see
>  http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/21/opinion/21LABI.html).
>
>Before the presidential meeting on February 18, human rights groups
>and other Tunisian exiles also called for the U.S. to match
>rhetorical commitment to democracy with real pressure on Tunisia.
>But official statements following the meeting praised Tunisia's
>commitment to reform and stressed continuation of the close ties
>between the two countries.
>
>The U.S. seems to have no problem in deferring closer questioning
>about democracy in the North African country. Nevertheless, Tunisia
>is scheduled to host the November 2005 world summit on the
>information society, and the country will be coming under increased
>scrutiny as the date for the summit approaches. Tunisian democracy
>advocates are still making extensive use of the internet to get
>their message out.
>
>This issue of AfricaFocus Bulletin contains statements from Human
>Rights Watch and a background briefing from Reporters without
>Borders on press freedom and the internet in Tunisia, as well as
>links to other recent commentary and more extensive background on
>human rights and democracy in Tunisia.
>     
>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
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>++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>Human Rights Watch
>
>Tunisia: Bush Should Call for End to Repression
>
>Tunisian President's U.S. Visit Will Test Bush's Commitment to
>Mideast Democracy
>
>http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=mideast&c=tunisi
>
>(Washington D.C., February 14, 2004) -- U.S. President George W.
>Bush should publicly state that Tunisia's policies of repression
>are incompatible with his administration's initiative on democracy
>in the Middle East, Human Rights Watch said today. Tunisian
>President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali will meet with Bush at the White
>House on February 18. "Tunisia bills itself as a moderate Muslim
>nation," said Joe Stork, acting director of Human Rights Watch's
>Middle East and North Africa division. "But there is nothing
>moderate in the way authorities repress nearly all forms of
>dissent."   
>
>President Ben Ali has won U.S. praise for his cooperation in
>antiterrorism efforts. Tunisia receives modest U.S. military aid,
>and the two countries conduct joint military exercises.   
>
>U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell urged political reforms and
>greater openness in Tunisia during a visit to Tunis in December.
>However, President Bush has omitted mention of Tunisia in his
>speeches advocating democracy in the region. Ben Ali's visit to
>Washington is the first by an Arab leader since Bush unveiled his
>initiative for democracy in the Middle East.   
>
>"The credibility of President Bush's plan to promote democracy for
>the Middle East is on the line," Stork said. "Ben Ali's government
>tolerates almost no dissent. Bush needs to speak candidly and
>publicly to demonstrate that his initiative is serious."   
>
>Tunisia's ruling party dominates political life nationally and
>locally. In 2002 the Tunisian parliament approved constitutional
>amendments making President Ben Ali, who came to power in 1987,
>eligible to stand for reelection in October 2004 and again in 2009.
>In the past three presidential elections, Ben Ali was reelected
>with an official tally of more than 99 percent. Tunisia has few
>genuinely independent organizations. Apart from a few
>low-circulation magazines, none of the print and broadcast media
>offer critical coverage of government policies.   
>
>"Tunisia should be leading the way on democracy in the region,
>given its economic and social achievements, and the status of
>women" said Stork. "Instead it has moved backwards."   
>
>Most of Tunisia's 500 political prisoners are suspected Islamists
>who were convicted after unfair trials on nonviolent charges such
>as membership in a political organization outlawed by the
>government.   
>
>The Tunisian judiciary lacks independence, especially in political
>trials. Judges turn a blind eye to torture allegations and
>procedural irregularities, convicting defendants on the basis of
>dubious confessions. Prisons are overcrowded and conditions are
>harsh. Several prominent long-term prisoners have been held for
>years at a time in isolation, where they are denied reading and
>writing materials and adequate medical care. Released political
>prisoners are frequently refused passports and subject to onerous
>sign-in requirements with the police. The police also put pressure
>on employers not to hire ex-prisoners.   
>
>"The government claims it is simply applying the law to curb
>illegal acts by extremists," said Stork. "But those who are jailed
>and harassed encompass a wide range of dissidents, including
>nonviolent Islamists, secular liberals, leftists and human rights
>activists."   
>
>*****************************************************************
>
>Human Rights Watch
>
>Tunisia: Repression and Harassment of Human Rights Defenders and
>Organizations
>
>February 14, 2004   
>
>Sihem Bensedrine, a journalist and founding member of the National
>Council for Liberties in Tunisia (CNLT), was assaulted on January
>5, 2004, as she left her home in downtown Tunis to go to an
>Internet cafÈ. She was accosted by three men in plainclothes, one
>of whom tripped and then beat and insulted her. Ms Bensedrine
>accused the police of carrying out the assault; she and other human
>rights activists have been beaten on previous occasions by men who
>were never identified or brought to justice. On January 13, 2004,
>she was turned away at the Interior Ministry when she tried, for
>the third time since 1999, to register her magazine Kalima. By law,
>registration is supposed to be a mere formality, but the refusal by
>authorities to issue a receipt for the notification -a common
>practice when it comes to independent journals and organizations -
>makes her publication legally vulnerable.
>
>Lassaad Jouhri, a human rights activist and ex-political prisoner,
>was assaulted on August 30, 2003, by four men in plainclothes in
>front of the downtown Tunis law office of Mohamed Nouri. This
>attack resembled two prior assaults on him by state security
>officers. Jouhri has been a key intermediary between prisoners and
>their families, on the one hand, and those seeking information
>about human rights conditions in Tunisia, on the other. Injuries he
>sustained from torture in prison years ago have left him disabled.
>
>Police have long harassed Radhia Nasraoui, a Tunis lawyer known for
>her outspoken promotion of human rights and defense of political
>prisoners. They have subjected her and her daughters to menacing
>surveillance and intimidated her clients. Her home and office have
>been the target of numerous suspicious break-ins in previous years.
>On July 13, 2003, unidentified men assaulted her.   
>
>Mohamed Nouri, a prominent rights lawyer and chair of the
>International Association for the Support of Political Prisoners
>(AISPP), was prevented from leaving the country on December 9,
>2003, as he was planning to attend a round-table meeting on freedom
>of expression in Geneva. The pretext was a judicial investigation
>into a charge of disseminating "false" information several months
>earlier.   
>
>Judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui, president of the Tunisian Center for an
>Independent Judiciary (CIJT), was dismissed in December 2001 from
>his judgeship for writing an open letter to President Ben Ali
>criticizing the lack of judicial independence. In August 2003, he
>was accused with Mohammed Nouri of disseminating "false"
>information. He has been prevented from leaving the country since
>November 2001.   
>
>Abdullah Zouari, a journalist for the now-defunct publication
>Al-Fajr, linked to the Nahdha party, spent 11 years in prison after
>an unfair trial on charges of "membership in an illegal
>organization." Freed in November 2002, he helped to publicize human
>rights abuses in the southern region to which he has been banished.
>In July he was re-arrested and is now serving a new nine-month
>sentence on charges of violating an administrative order
>restricting his movements.   
>
>Independent human rights organizations like the CIJT, the AISPP,
>and the CNLT have never been legally recognized by the government.
>The venerable Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH), while legal,
>has been hampered by government-inspired legal maneuvers designed
>to undermine its independence and outspokenness. In November 2003,
>the government prevented the League from receiving a grant from the
>European Commission.   
>
>Tunisia: Recommended Steps on Human Rights   
>
>Tunisian authorities should: 
>
>* Declare an amnesty for all political prisoners convicted for
>activities not linked to acts of violence. All other prisoners
>convicted for politically motivated acts in proceedings that did
>not conform to international standards for a fair trial should be
>granted a new and fair trial or released. Pending such action,
>authorities should bring conditions for prisoners up to
>international norms by ending practices that include extended
>isolation regimes for selected political prisoners and the
>deprivation of reading and writing materials. Those in long-term
>isolation from other prisoners include Habib Ellouz and Ali
>Laaridh, serving a life term and fifteen years respectively after
>being convicted in unfair mass trials before military courts in
>1992.         
>
>* End harassment of released political prisoners by granting them
>passports. Cases of ex-prisoners denied passports include Ali Ben
>Hedi Rouahi, from the city of Bizerte, who is unable to join his
>family in Europe; Lassaad Jouhri, a human rights defender from
>Tunis who was tortured while in prison, and who is being denied
>even a national ID card; Hedi Ben Boubaker, from Golaat (Douz), who
>was released in November 1999 and cannot join his wife in France;
>and Hatem Ben Romdhane, from Tunis, released in January 2003.    
>
>* End harassment of human rights defenders, notably by
>investigating the pattern of physical assaults on them and bringing
>to justice the men who carried them out. Such assaults in public
>places by unidentified men are too common to be coincidental and
>have never resulted in the identification and punishment of the
>perpetrators.         
>
>* End arbitrary travel bans on former judge Mokhtar Yahiaoui of the
>Tunisian Center for an Independent Judiciary (CIJT) and lawyer
>Mohammed Nouri of the International Association for the Support of
>Political Prisoners (AISPP).         
>
>* End legal harassment of human rights organizations. Authorities
>have refused legal authorization to human rights organizations,
>including the CNLT, AISPP, and CIJT. On Saturday, January 3, 2004
>police blocked efforts by the AISPP to hold a congress. The
>Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH) has legal status but is facing
>constant legal and administrative pressures from the government,
>including politically motivated lawsuits challenging its internal
>elections and, recently, blockage of a grant issued to the LTDH by
>the European Union.
>
>*************************************************************
>
>Tunisia: The Internet under Surveillance
>
>Reporters without Borders
>
>http://www.rsf.org
>
>The government says it favours rapid and democratic growth of the
>Internet. But in practice, state security police keep it under very
>tight control. Sites are censored, e-mail intercepted, cybercafÈs
>monitored and users arrested and arbitrarily imprisoned. One
>cyber-dissident was arrested in 2002 and sent to jail for two
>years.
>
>The country has been online since the mid-1990s and the Internet is
>more widespread than in the rest of North Africa because the
>government promotes it as a major economic tool. It is administered
>by the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI), which is part of the
>telecommunications ministry.
>
>Phone lines are good and the government has encouraged ISPs, of
>which there are six state-owned and six privately-owned. The
>authorities have set up 300 cybercafÈs ("publinets") throughout the
>country and says all universities and secondary schools and
>universities are on the Internet.
>
>Press freedom does not exist in Tunisia, so people have taken
>wholesale to the Internet to take part in it there. This is what
>journalist Sihem Bensedrine did when she could not get permission
>to publish a newspaper and instead set up an online magazine,
>Kalima. But President Zine el-Abidine ben Ali and his powerful
>police apparatus are determined to stamp out all cyber-dissidence.
>
>The Tunisian government runs one of the world's most extensive
>Internet censorship operations. The only ISPs allowed to serve the
>general public are those owned by the president's associates,
>including his daughter. The ATI ensures that the market is tightly
>controlled by the authorities. ISPs must sign a contract saying
>they will only allow customers to use the Internet for "scientific,
>technological and commercial purposes strictly to do with their
>area of activity."
>
>Cyberspace in Tunisia has been regulated since 2001 by the press
>law, which provides for censorship. Access to some news websites,
>such as Kalima and TUNeZINE, but also those of NGOs and foreign
>media carrying criticism of the government, is routinely blocked.
>
>The powers of the "cyber-police"
>
>The managers of the publinets have the right to check what sites
>their customers are looking at and can force them to disconnect at
>any time. There is plenty of evidence that cybercafÈs are closely
>watched by the police. Plainclothes officers regularly collect
>details of Internet activity from the machines to check who has
>been looking at what sites.
>
>Control of telecommunications, including the Internet, was stepped
>up further in 2002 and a full-scale corps of cyber-police went into
>operation to track down "subversive" websites to be blocked,
>intercept e-mail or attempts to reach sites containing "political
>or critical" material, hunt for and neutralise "proxy" servers used
>to get round directly-blocked access to sites, and track down and
>arrest "over-active" Internet users - the cyber-dissidents.
>
>About 20 young men were arrested at their homes in the southern
>town of Zarzis on 5 February 2003. In April, seven of them,
>including a minor, were in prison in Tunis for "delinquency, theft
>and obtaining material to make explosives" as a result of
>consulting "terrorist" websites. Their lawyer, who visited them in
>jail, said they had been tortured.
>
>The daily paper La Presse reported on 22 April 2003 that the
>government had stopped issuing permits to open privately-owned
>cybercafÈs and had said access to the Internet would be limited to
>the government-controlled publinets.
>
>"Ettounsi" sent to prison for two years
>
>Zouhair Yahyaoui was arrested by plainclothes police on 4 June 2002
>in Tunis, at a computer centre where he worked. He was taken to his
>home, where they searched his bedroom and seized his computer
>equipment.
>
>During interrogation, he was tortured with three sessions of being
>made to hang by his arms with feet off the ground. As a result of
>this, he gave them the password to his website, which allowed the
>authorities to block access to it.
>
>Yahyaoui, who used the pseudonym "Ettounsi" ("The Tunisian" in
>Arabic), founded the website TUNeZINE in July 2001 to put out news
>about the fight for democracy and freedom in the country and to
>publicise opposition material. He wrote many columns and essays and
>was the first to publish an open letter that his uncle, Judge
>Mokhtar Yahyaoui, had sent to President Ben Ali denouncing the
>Tunisian judiciary's lack of independence. The judge's own website,
>almizen.com, which his nephew also ran, was destroyed.
>
>TUNeZINE was censored by the authorities right from the start. But
>its fans each week received a list of "proxy" servers through which
>they could access it.
>
>He was sentenced by an appeals court on 10 July 2002 to a year in
>prison for "putting out false news to give the impression there had
>been a criminal attack on persons or property" (article 306-3 of
>the penal code) and another year for "theft by the fraudulent use
>of a communications link," meaning an Internet connection at a
>cybercafÈ where he worked (article 84 of the communications code).
>He was jailed in very harsh conditions and staged two
>hunger-strikes in early 2003 to protest against his imprisonment.
>
>*************************************************************
>
>Additional Links - Current
>
>International Freedom of Expression Clearing House (IFEX)
>Alerts on Tunisia, including Feb. 18 press release
>http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/1449
>
>TuneZINE
>On-line magazine, in French and Arabic
>http://www.tunezine.com
>
>Reporters without Borders
>Letter to European Commission protesting support to Tunisian state
>media
>http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=9172            
>          
>AllAfrica.com
>Includes news from official Tunisia Online as well as other news
>and statements
>http://allafrica.com/tunisia
>http://fr.allafrica.com/tunisia
>
>Le Autre Tunisie
>Commentary and news, in French
>http://lautretunisie.lautre.net
>
>Statement from Tunisian Civil Society, Jan. 22, 2004
>http://www.tunezine.com/article.php3?id_article=147
>
>***********************************************************
>
>Additional Links - Background
>
>Comite pour le Respect des Libertes et
>des Droits de l'Homme en Tunisie
>Has material through year 2000, in French
>http://www.maghreb-ddh.sgdg.org/crldht
>
>Maghreb des droites de l'Homme
>http://www.maghreb-ddh.sgdg.org
>Covers Tunisia and other North African states, in French
>
>Middle East Report, Oct-Dec 1997
>Authoritarianism and Civil Society in Tunisia
>http://www.merip.org/mer/mer205/alex.htm
>
>Le Monde Diplomatique
>Un miracle tunisien aux pieds d'argile
>http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2003/03/BESSIS/9971
>
>*************************************************************
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>
>************************************************************


-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu