letters

November 28, 2007


Ambassador Mohamed Nejib Hachana
Embassy of Tunisia
1515 Massachussets Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20005
Tel: (202) 862 1850; Fax: (202) 862 1858

Dear Ambassador Hachana,

I am writing to you to thank you for sending to our former Chairman, James Ottaway, Jr., the summary of the measures “to promote democracy and human rights” announced by President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in a speech he delivered on November 7 to mark his twentieth anniversary in power.

As a member of the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX) Tunisian Monitoring Group (TMG), the World Press Freedom Committee welcomed previous presidential measures, including the release of scores of political prisoners; and would naturally welcome any new measures to genuinely promote and protect human rights in Tunisia.

Unfortunately, according to research documented by local and international human rights groups, including the IFEX-TMG - which undertook six fact-finding missions to Tunisia since January 2005, none of the highly publicized presidential measures taken over the past two decades seemed to have prevented the continuous deterioration of the basic right to freedom of expression, association, assembly and movement. Most of the IFEX-TMG recommendations were not taken into account. Its latest report was made public in April: http://campaigns.ifex.org/tmg/IFEXTMGreport_April2007.doc

Such an alarming conclusion was also highlighted this year on November 13 in Washington during a conference on Tunisia held at Georgetown University Law Center. Prominent academics and international human rights researchers and six Tunisian activists of the most beleaguered and independent NGOs in the country, found it strange and saddening that Arab countries enmeshed in problems related more to social issues, illiteracy, the economy and security are offering today more room for freedom of association, expression and movement than Tunisia under President Ben Ali.

Two other Tunisian civil society advocates invited to participate in this conference and meet with US civil society figures and government officials and legislators were arbitrarily prevented from traveling to Washington: Ahmed Rahmouni, president of the Association of Tunisian Magistrates, whose democratically elected board members were ousted in 2005; and Mohamed Abbou, a human rights lawyer who spent 28 months in prison for criticizing President Ben Ali and writing about torture in Tunisian prisons and the lack of independence of the judiciary for a locally blocked Tunisian news website.

Although Tunisia is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which obligates it to guarantee the right of everyone to leave their own country, travel bans seem to have become a tool to silence and punish President Ben Ali’s critics and often their relatives. Many of them have reluctantly resorted to hunger strike to protest the abuse of this basic right. Human rights lawyer Mohamed Ennouri and journalists Slim Boukhdhir stopped a long and life-threatening hunger strike earlier this month.

Other Tunisians living in exile also saw their right to travel and return to their country arbitrarily restricted. For instance, Kamel Jendoubi, president of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Righs Network and of the Paris-based Committee to Protect Liberties and Human Rights and Kamel Labidi, a consultant for IFEX and representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists in the Middle East and North Africa, have been waiting for their passports to be issued respectively in Paris for 7 years and Washington for 4 months.

To date, hundreds of former political prisoners like Abdallah Zouari and Hamadi Jebali of the now-defunct weekly Al-Fajr, whose sole crime was to peacefully exercise their right to freedom of association and expression, remain not only deprived of the right to freedom of movement and regularly harassed by the police after several years of unfair custody, but also prevented from earning a living.

Furthermore, prominent lawyers, academics, independent journalists and educated women in a country which prides itself on granting women unparalleled status in the Arab world more than 50 years ago are often assaulted and called names in the streets of Tunis by plainclothes police.

I personally witnessed with IFEX-TMG colleagues during five trips to Tunisia in 2005 how former political prisoners were prevented from leading a decent life and how human rights activists and independent journalists were denied the right to freedom of assembly and to establish an independent newspaper or press syndicate.

The decision earlier this month by President Ben Ali to increase the public grant allocated to minor political parties mainly loyal to his Excellency and to their newspapers, and to allow them to get more public and official TV, would certainly have a minor impact on Tunisian citizens’ thirst for freedom of expression and pluralism. It would also do little to help the country abide by its commitment to international human rights standards and particularly the ICCPR.

So would be any other presidential measure aimed at improving the image of the state-run Higher Communication Council, “lowering from 20 to 18, the minimum voting age,” and “amending the Electoral Code,” or “preparing a bill that consolidates the judicial guarantees offered during the period of custody,” as long as freedom of expression and civil society remained under tight siege and the Legislative and Judiciary branches heavily influenced by the Executive Branch.

President Ben Ali’s measures “to promote democracy and human rights” would sound less cosmetic if it came along with concrete steps toward ending the drastic restrictions on the right to freedom of association, expression and movement and the judicial and police harassment of the Tunisian Human Rights League, the first of its kind in the Arab world, and of all the other NGOs yearning for the same freedoms.

Such measures would certainly prompt hope among human rights defenders and democracy advocates, the day politically motivated imprisonment and unfair trials were brought to an end. The latest victim is journalist Slim Boukhdhir, according to local and international human rights groups. He was arrested and prosecuted on November 26 in Sfax allegedly for “aggression against a public employee” and “affront to public decency.” He faces up to 18-month imprisonment. Boukhdhir’s main crime apparently is his public published criticism of President Ben Ali and members of the first family.

I would much appreciate it if you could convey to your government our deep concern about the worrying lack of attention for more than two years to IFEX-TMG recommendations and our call to allow UN rapporteurs to visit Tunisia upon request, particularly the Special Rapporteur on Torture and the Special Rapporteur on Free Expression, as well as your Special Representative on the situation of human rights defenders.

Thank you for your attention. I look forward to your reply at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

E. Markham Bench
Executive Director

cc: Richard N. Winfield
      WPFC Chairman