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press releases & Protests
July 13, 2007
His Excellency M. Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali
President of the Republic
Palace of Carthage,
2016 Carthage
Tunisia
Your Excellency:
On behalf of the World Press Freedom Committee —an organization representing 45 press freedom groups from throughout the world— I wish to denounce strongly the criminal defamation charges against Omar Mestiri, editor of the online journal Kalima, who has been unjustly summoned to appear in court on August 2 and faces a sentence of up to three years in prison.
The charges were brought by Mohamed Baccar, a lawyer with close connections to those in power, who felt insulted by an article published on Sept. 5, 2006 by Kalima about his surprising legal rehabilitation after being disbarred for having been convicted of several counts of perjury and fraud.
This case arises highly disturbing questions about the legal proceeding that can cost Mr. Mestiri his very freedom. When he was first questioned on March 29, the public prosecutor focused his inquiry on how Mr. Mestiri’s publication obtained the details revealing that Mr. Baccar was rehabilitated and not on whether this information was truthful. Also, prosecutors demanded to know the identity of those who revealed this information to Kalima disregarding whether the information was true or not.
Mr. Mestiri, in a show of journalistic courage, refused to answer any of these questions rightfully invoking the sanctity of his publication’s sources. Also, the information that so deeply concerned the prosecutors was a matter of public domain in Tunisia even before Kalima published its article.
Furthermore, it must be underlined that Kalima has been a banned publication in Tunisia for sometime already, making it even more unlikely that the information would have any impact on Mr. Baccar’s concerns.
Your Excellency may recall that I was one of three international NGO visitors privileged to witness a Tunisian constitutionally guaranteed attempt by Kalima’s management to register this publication at the Ministry of Interior, but she was denied, given false information, and finally ignored. Yet she followed all constitutional rules and regulations; she and we all know that Tunisia is a country —we are reminded regularly— dedicated to the rule of law.
This blatant attempt to silence Mr. Mestiri and his publication, however, is
a clear violation of the most relevant international human rights documents in
existence, including the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, of which
Tunisia is a signatory. This document’s Article 9 states the following:
Every individual shall have the right to receive information. Every
individual shall have the right to express and disseminate his opinions within
the law.
Likewise, the European Convention on Human Rights supports the concept that public officials, and their close associates, should expect more, and not less, scrutiny and criticism from the rest of society. This acceptance of being a willing target of the media’s slings and arrows also implies public officials should restrain themselves from invoking criminal defamation laws, which constitute some of the most arbitrary tools to silence criticism directed at them.
The attempts of your country’s criminal system to silence Mr. Mestiri and Kalima sends a disturbing message to all media in Africa in general and in your country in particular. A free and independent media represent a vital component to any country’s democracy, and without them, government officials cannot be kept accountable and responsive to the rest of society.
Without this essential ingredient, transparency and good governance become impossible to achieve, especially when any Tunisian journalist —because of the criminal nature of defamation laws in your country— risks imprisonment just by fulfilling his or her duty to keep the public informed.
Therefore, your Excellency, I strongly urge you to use the full force of your executive power in order to influence the Tunisian judicial system to declare the charges imposed on Mr. Mestiri and his publication null and void and allow them to exercise their press freedom rights fully in Tunisia.
Respectfully,
E. Markham Bench
Executive Director
World Press Freedom Committee
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