“Tunisians are clearly aware of the heavy responsibility they hold with regard to the future of democracy in the region. They do know that the entire world is watching carefully, that their success, or failure, will have a significant impact in the Arab world. It is here, indeed, that the democratic renewal of the Arab world is unfolding.”
– Journalist and human rights activist Sihem Bensedrine From the anthology, Fleeting Words, edited by Naziha Rjiba, published in cooperation with PEN Tunisia and Atlas Publications, with the support of Index on Censorship and IFEX.
Preliminary research from a survey of nearly 10,000 Arab respondents has found that while most support the right to free expression online, they are apt to believe that the internet should be regulated, according to the researchers.
The survey — a joint effort between researchers at the Qatar campus of the US-based Northwestern University and the World Internet Project — explored media usage in the Arab world. Participants were drawn from eight Arab nations: Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.
The survey questioned participants’ perceptions of the news media, finding that 61 per cent thought the “quality of news reporting in the Arab world has improved over the past two years.” Media credibility declined in countries that experienced revolutions during the Arab Spring. The Saudi Arabian respondents gave their media outlets high marks with 71 [per cent agreeing with the statement, “The media in your country can report the news independently without interference from officials”.
Overall, the survey found high Facebook penetration among respondents who used social media. Ninety-four percent of the social media users had Facebook accounts, 47 per cent used Twitter and 40 per cent used Facebook. Among the Bahrain social media users, 92 per cent had a Facebook account, while just 29 per cent of the Egyptian respondents did.
The survey aimed to assess the use of media — TV, radio, newspapers, books, web — and levels of trust respondents had toward the sources. It also sought to guage how the respondents used the internet to communicate and conduct transactions like banking or purchases.
Tunisia’s Court of Cassation yesterday failed to review the seven-and-a-half year sentence of Jabeur Mejri, who was convicted last year of publishing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad on Facebook. Mejri’s lawyer, Mohammed Mselmi, told AFP that the demand for an appeal “was mysteriously withdrawn”, even though a hearing had been scheduled on 25 April. The defence team will now seek a presidential pardon for their client.
Last March, a primary court in Mahdia (eastern Tunisia) sentenced Mejri and his friend Ghazi Beji to seven and half years in prison. Beji, who published a satirical book entitled “the illusion of Islam” online, fled Tunisia. Mejir, however, has been in prison since he was arrested on 5 March 2012.
Both men were fined 1,200 dinars (GBP £480) and sentenced to five years in prison for publishing content “liable to cause harm to the public order” under article 121 (3) of the Tunisian Penal Code. They each received a two-year jail term for “offending others through public communication networks” (article 86 of the Telecommunications Code), and another six months for “moral transgression.”
On 23 April 2013, a committee supporting the two young men published a letter from Mejri, written in his prison cell in Mahdia, in which he claims he has been subject to torture. Mejri wrote:
There’s no freedom of expression here in Tunisia, it is dead…I am forbidden from medicines to cure my illness and from other rights. Seven years and six months is a long period to spend within a dark and gloomy small place. Officers find pleasure to torture me [sic]”
On 21 March, a Tunisian court sentenced rapper Ala Yacoubi (aka Weld El15) to two years in prison in absentia, over an anti-police song and video, Boulicia Kleb published on YouTube. In the song, Weld El15 describes police officers as “dogs” and says “he would like to slaughter a police officer instead of sheep at Eid al-Adha”. Four other rappers, to whom Weld El15 dedicated the song, were also sentenced to two years in prison in absentia. Actress Sabrine Klibi, who appears in the video, and cameraman Mohamed Hedi Belgueyed, were arrested on 10 March. They each received a six-month suspended jail sentence.
Yacoubi, who is in hiding, told award-winning blog Nawaat:
There are those who accuse me of inciting violence against police. I was only using their language…I was subject to all forms of police violence: physical and verbal. As an artist, I can only answer them through my art: aggressive art…I expressed myself in a country, where I thought freedom of expression exists. It turned out that I was wrong.
To bring charges against Weld El15 and his associates, prosecutors applied anti-free speech laws inherited from the dictatorship era. Among these laws are articles 128 and 226 of the Penal Code. The latter carries a penalty of a six-month jail term for “affronting public decency”; while article 128 states that anyone found guilty of “accusing without proof a public official” could face a two-year jail term.
Weld El15 is not the only victim of these liberticidal laws. Blogger Olfa Rihai could face imprisonment over criminal defamation charges [articles 128 and 245 of the Tunisian Penal Code. Last December, Riahi posted on her blog an article alleging that the then foreign minister Rafik Abdessalem “misused public money” by spending several nights at the luxurious Sheraton hotel in Tunis. She went on to claime that the minister might have been involved in an extra-marital affair. Riahi is also accused of “harming others or disrupting their lives through public communication networks,” under article 86 of the Telecommunication code (Law no.1-2001 of 15 January 2001). If convicted under this article, she could spend up to two years in prison and pay a fine of up to 1,000 Tunisian dinars.
Article 86 of the Telecommunication Code highlights Tunisia’s vulnerable internet freedom. Despite, positive steps taken by the Tunisian authorities in favour of free speech online, freedom of the internet remains under threat due to Ben Ali’s ICT laws. Last September, Mongi Marzoug minister of Information and Communications Technology, officially announced “the death of Ammar404” [slang for Tunisian internet censorship]. In January, the ICT ministry cancelled a number of regulatory provisions in the licenses previously awarded to privately-owned telecom operators Tunisiana and Orange Tunisie.
The two ISPs are now able to bypass the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI), for incoming and outgoing international Internet traffic. The former regime obliged ISPs to route their internet traffic via the ATI to facilitate internet filtering and surveillance.
Yet these guarantees remain insufficient, as long as repressive ICT and internet laws remain on the books. For instance, article 9 of Internet Regulations (dated 22 March, 1997) obliges ISPs to monitor and take down content contrary to public order and “good morals”. No one can stand in the way of prosecutors and judges who wish to apply these laws.
The National Constituent Assembly (NCA) is scheduled to adopt a new constitution by next summer. A second draft of the constitution, released last December, enshrines the right to free expression and prohibits “prior censorship”. However, unless anti free speech laws are revised or abolished, the future constitution will in no way be enough to guarantee free expression.
A 19-year-old Tunisian women’s rights activist, known only as Amina, has come under fire for posting a topless photograph of herself online. Amina is a member of FEMEN, a Ukranian radical feminist group notorious for their topless protests. Weeks ago, Amina uploaded a picture of herself to a website she started for the group in Tunisia, with ”My Body is My Own and Not the Source of Anyone’s Honor” written across her bare chest.
Late last week, the Paris-based head of the group, Inna Shevchenko, claimed that Amina had been committed to a psychiatric ward by her family members. Shevchenko told the Atlantic that she last heard from Amina on 18 March. Her disappearance came after a 16 March appearance on Tunisian talkshow Labes to talk about her controversial photographs. However, her lawyer Bouchra Bel Haj Hmida, told Tunisia live that she is not missing, and denied allegations that Amina has been sent to a psychiatric facility.
While no legal charges have been brought against Amina, Salafi preacher Adel Almi said days before her disappearance that she should be punished with 80-100 lashes, and called for her to be stoned to death. According to Bel Haj Hmida, Amina could face up to six months of jail-time if charged with public indecency.
Women from across the globe have posted photographs of themselves topless online, with messages of support for Amina scrawled across their bodies. A petition for her release has now garnered over 84,000 signatures.
Secular activist Maryam Namazie has called for 4 April to be declared International Day to Defend Amina, in order to “remind the Islamists and the world that the real epidemic and disaster that must be challenged is misogyny — Islamic or otherwise.”
Sara Yasin is an Editorial Assistant at Index. She tweets from @missyasin
A Tunisian journalist was physically attacked after being ejected from a political meeting last week. Al Jazeera journalist Lotfi Hajji was officially invited to a meeting on 24 March which brought together several political parties, but was ejected after some participants complained that he had a different political approach. The microphone which was being used to record the meeting was reportedly stolen and destroyed. After he was forced to leave the meeting, Hajji was severely assaulted.
A Tunisian court today released Nasreddine Ben Saida, general director of the Arabic-language daily Attounissia, who was arrested on 15 February after his newspaper published a photo German-Tunisian footballer Sami Khedira with his naked girlfriend. Rim Boukriba, a journalist for Attounisia, expressed her discontent about the arrest. “He was treated like a criminal … did he kill someone? Is he too dangerous to stay at large?” she said. “The authorities who jailed Ben Saida are seeking to silence us … their problem is not with the picture itself … but with the newspaper, which is popular, and widely read”, she told Index. “The picture is only an excuse,” she added. The court is expected to issue a verdict on the case on 8 March.
Three Tunisian journalists have been arrested on charges of offending public morality following the publication of a nude photograph. The Attounissia newspaper printed a photograph of Real-Madrid footballer Sami Khedira covering the breasts of his otherwise naked girlfriend, model Lena Gercke. The photograph drew an angry response from the country’s public prosecutor, resulting in the arrest of the newspaper’s publisher Nasreddine Ben Said, Habib Guizani, its editor-in- chief, and its world editor Hedi Hidhri. The photo was a reprint of a 2012 cover of the German edition of GQ Magazine.
