– 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.

Photo: fbioche / Demotix

During the next few months, the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) will present its final draft of Tunisia’s new constitution, a document that has seen many changes of emphasis since the NCA was founded in November 2011. A second draft in December 2012 offered new guarantees for free speech rights and barred prior censorship. Yet the ill-defined and repressive legal framework created by former President Zein el-Abidine Ben Ali to silence dissident voices is still in place, and free speech advocates remain concerned over Islamist vows to criminalise blasphemy.

Although Ben Ali’s autocratic rule ended almost two years ago, his legacy remains on the books. Ben Ali-era laws represent a serious threat to free speech. The public prosecutor’s office used Article 121 (3) of the Tunisian Penal Code to charge Nessma TV boss Nabil Karoui for broadcasting the animated film Persepolis and newspaper director Nasreddine Ben Saida, the publisher of the Arabic-language daily Attounissia, for publishing a photo of German-Tunisian football player Sami Khedira embracing a naked model.

The article prohibits the distribution of publications “liable to cause harm to the public order or public morals”. Supporters of free expression in Tunisia will have to wait until a third and final draft of the constitution, due in Spring 2013, to see if the NCA can find the will to amend or abolish this article and other anti-free speech laws, journalists, bloggers and artists risk facing more “public disorder” and “morality” charges.

The revolution raised urgent need to fundamentally reform the media sector in Tunisia and accordingly the interim government prepared new, progressive, if imperfect, media legislation in 2011 to replace the restrictive laws inherited from the Ben Ali regime. However the proposed legal guarantees were stonewalled by the government of Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali, Ennahda’s Secretary General.

Decree-law 116 requires the creation of an independent high authority to regulate broadcast media. But this decree has been resisted by the interim government which instead has continued to make its own political appointments to senior media management posts.
To date the government has declined to implement the decree, or a parallel decree-law, 115-2011, on the print media. Months after the ousting of Ben Ali, distrust remains deep in the media sector, while resistance to reform prevails.

“The failure to abide by decrees passed under the former transitional government and run by the official gazette thus far is alarming,” said Kamel Labidi, a veteran journalist and human rights defender, who led the National Authority to Reform Information and Communication (INRIC), an independent body tasked with reforming the media sector after the revolution.

“It is shocking to see the government inclined to yield to pressure groups which were close to the country’s fugitive dictator and unwilling to conform to international standards for media broadcasting regulation.”

Attacks on the media and the rise of ‘Sacred Values’

Over 2012, street attacks on free speech in the name of religion increased dramatically, a trend that can only increase, given the apparent indifference of police and level of impunity enjoyed by the attackers. Tunisia’s current government routinely expresses condemnation of violence and its commitment to free speech. Yet the seriousness of that commitment is constantly questioned as officials turn a blind eye to the perpetrators and blame the victims.

Police brutality against journalists did not take long to resume after the fall of the regime either. As early as May 2011, journalists, bloggers and photographers were targeted while covering demonstrations and this pattern of abuse by law enforcement has continued to this date. On 24 March, Al-Jazeera journalist Lotfi Hajji was attacked while reporting from a meeting organised by supporters of the former Interim Prime Minister Béji Caid Essebsi.

Many observers saw the April 2012 statement by Ennahda leader Ghannouchi raising the possibility of “taking radical measures in the news media domain including, possibly, privatising the public media,” as giving tacit sympathy to the violent anti-media protests.

When Islamist ‘salafist’ extremists attacked the Tunis Printemps des Arts (Spring of Arts), a modern contemporary art fair in June, Tunisian Minister of Culture, Mehdi Mabrouk, was quicker to condemn the targeted artists before the attackers and vowed to take legal action against the fair’s organisers.

Previously three Islamists accompanied by a bailiff and a lawyer had toured the Palais El-Abdellia gallery and demanded that two artworks they deemed “un-Islamic” be taken down. It was the last day of the ten day event, but after the gallery closed the salafists came back in larger numbers, broke in and destroyed a number of artworks.

Two exhibitors were charged: Nadia Jelassi for her sculpture depicting a veiled woman surrounded by a pile of rocks and Ben Slama over a work showing a line of ants streaming out of a child’s schoolbag to spell ‘Allah’. Prosecutors used Article 121.3 of the Tunisian penal code which makes it an offence to ‘distribute, offer for sale, publicly display, or possess, with the intent to distribute, sell, display for the purpose of propaganda, tracts, bulletins, and fliers, whether of foreign origin or not, that are liable to cause harm to the public order or public morals’.

Bloggers Ghazi Ben Mohamed Beji and Jaber Ben Abdallah Majri were also jailed under Article 121.3 for publishing online satirical writings about Islam. Majri was detained and tried, while Beji, who fled to Europe, was convicted in absentia. During an appeals hearing on 25 June 2012, the court upheld Majri’s prison sentence, while Beji’s case was not heard on appeal.

The attacks echoed violence in the preceding year, when protesters forced their way into the Afrikart Cinema in downtown Tunis in June 2011 to protest its screening of a documentary entitled Laïcité Inshallah (“Secularism, if God wills”). And in April 2011, an unknown assailant hit film director Nouri Bouzid with a metal bar, shortly after he told a Tunisian radio station that he supported a secular constitution for Tunisia and that his next film would defend civil liberties and criticised religious fundamentalism.

Other attacks carried out by Salafists have targeted artists, including a theatre group performing on Habib Bourguiba Avenue in Tunis in March and academics, notably from Manouba University in north-eastern Tunisia, and journalists as well as media personnel and institutions. The targets included Nessma TV after the showing of Persepolis, for which station boss Karoui was later arrested, tried and fined. Karoui’s home was also firebombed. The film had earlier appeared in Tunisian cinemas with few complaints but when broadcast in October it was dubbed into a Tunisian Arabic dialect, which enraged the Salafists.

The increasing violence surrounding artistic and cultural expression deemed ‘blasphemous’ came as the ruling Islamist Ennahda Movement, which controls 40 per cent of the NCA’s seats, vowed to “legally protect the sacred” and filed a blasphemy bill. Though Ennahda later agreed in principle to drop an anti-blasphemy clause from the draft constitution after negotiations with the other two parties in the ruling coalition, the Congress for the Republic and the Democratic Forum for Work and Liberties, it is by not likely that Islamists will give up their efforts to seek legal authority to criminally ‘punish’ the blasphemous.

The discussion surrounding the proposed amendment of Tunisia’s Penal Code to criminalise violations of sacred values, would impose broad restrictions on freedom of expression far beyond that permitted under international conventions in particular by seeking to protect “sacred values” and “symbols” that do not enjoy their protection.

The draft was vague, according to an Article 19 study, leaving the law, if adopted, open to overly broad interpretation and possible abuse. “What are sacred values?” asked the organisation. “Who determines them and how? What constitutes a violation?” The proposed law also ran counter to the view of UN human rights bodies that laws criminalising defamation of religions and protection of symbols and beliefs contradict rights to freedom of expression. The UN also concluded such laws can be counter-productive in that they are prone to abuse, sometimes at the expense of the religious minorities that they purport to protect.

State attempts to influence the media condemned

Meanwhile, the government continued to appoint the directors of major public media unilaterally, without consulting media professionals, and in the absence of transparent employment processes. The appointments brought the objectivity of the process and the appointees’ own merit and competence into question.

Amidst strong protest, the government had made its own choice of staff to lead the national news agency TAP, Tunisian TV and the country’s leading press house, Société nouvelle d’impression, de presse et d’édition (SNIPE) on 7 January 2012. Though most of these appointments were later revoked after protests organised by the National Union for Tunisian Journalists (SNJT), the trick was repeated in July and August with the appointment of new directors of public radio and a new CEO of Tunisian Television.

On August 21, the government fired Samari Kamel, a well-known human rights activist, as director-general of the influential newspaper group Dar Assabah. He was replaced by Lotfi Touati, a former regime-era police commissioner and government sympathiser. In 2009, Touati was identified as the prime architect of a Ben Ali regime inspired takeover of the leadership of the country’s National Union of Journalists. The Dar Assabah media group is the oldest media house in the country, established in 1951, and Touati’s appointment stirred much controversy.

The SNTJ denounced the government’s move. And Labidi said the government had made the appointments, not based on any media experience or criteria, but because of their alignment with the ruling Ennahda party.

Days after his appointment, Touati withdrew an article due to be published one of the group’s dailies that was critical of his approach. He also fired one of the three top editors at the Arabic-language daily Assabah and published a short list of people authorised to write editorials, the reports said. The chairman of the board of Dar Assabah, Mustapha Ben Letaief and another board member, Fethi Sellaouti both resigned in protest and on September 11, Dar Assabah staff went on strike to protest his appointment.

Touati continued to draw controversy. On September 13 his speeding car injured one of his own reporters, Khalil Hannachi, as he waited outside the group offices to interview him. The journalist lost consciousness and was taken to a local hospital with head and ear injuries.

In general the state of both printing and distribution of independent newspapers is still highly problematic. While many new titles emerged when restrictions were lifted in 2011, few were sustainable, as no proactive policy promoting the emergence of a professional, free, independent and pluralistic press was put in place.

Newspapers also have been facing turmoil and hardships, with individuals close to the old regime still active in the industry. “Rather than transform the public media into free, independent and professional institutions after it had served for years as merely a tool in the hands of the Ben Ali regime, the government’s appointments have honoured Ben Ali’s men in the media sector by awarding them key posts in the public service media,” journalist Fahem Boukadous of the Tunisian Centre for Freedom of the Press (CTPJ) told mission members.

“Many have perceived these appointments as the authority’s attempt to instate individuals it can control in its effort to domesticate the media.” Also the allocation of institutional and public service advertising between media still lacks transparency despite the winding down of the Tunisian External Communication Agency (ATCE), which had used its power of advertising budget patronage to bring the Tunisian media to heel during the Ben Ali era.
Reforming the regulation of Tunisian media

Observers both inside and outside Tunisia have concluded that proposals for the regulation of the country’s media do not meet international standards. Draft clauses in the original text of the new constitution called for the establishment of an “independent media regulatory body,” but chosen by the National Constituent Assembly (ANC).

This raised fears that the government’s past bad practice in appointing staff and pressurising the media would simply be enshrined by the new body. All regulatory powers over the media, including the governing bodies of public media, must have guaranteed independence.

In frustration at the practices of government Labidi and his fellow members of INRIC decided to end its activities on 4 July, having waited in vain for a response from the government since 30 April, when it released its final report and recommendations. A commission of human rights experts on the independent Committee for the Achievement of the Revolution, Political Reform and Democratic Transition (HIROR) followed suit on 24 August.

Another reason for Labidi’s resignation was a draft amendment proposed by a minor political party to the Decree 115-2011, designed to act as a new press code. The code, which is supposed to ensure freedom of press, has been approved by parliament but not yet implemented. The proposed amendments would introduce jail time for insulting sacred icons and public figures, among other restrictions.

Meanwhile, the Internet remains partly free in practice but the repressive legal framework governing web usage under Ben Ali remains. In May the Minister for Human Rights and Transitional Justice Samir Dilou told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that “the Internet was a partner in the revolution so the government would not punish it.” The reality has been a little less straightforward.

The Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI), the web censor under Ben Ali, was ordered by a military tribunal in 2011 to filter five Facebook pages criticising the army. In early 2012, despite the objections of the new ATI leadership, there were calls for a blanket ban on access to pornographic websites, eventually overruled by Tunisia’s highest court.

The existing 1997 Telecommunications Decree and ‘Internet regulations’, make Internet Service Providers (ISPs) liable for third-party content without exceptions – in breach of international conventions. They also require ISPs to monitor and take down content considered contrary to public order and ‘good morals’.

ISPs were still required to submit a list of subscribers on a monthly basis and ban use of encryption tools without prior state approval. The proposed press code – with its powers to bring criminal defamation charges and overly broad penalties for ‘hate speech’ – can be applied to online publishers as well. However, as the cases of bloggers Ghazi Ben Mohamed Beji and Jaber Ben Abdallah Majri illustrated, ordinary public order law from the Ben Ali era can suffice to silence critical opinion.

Under the former regime, ATI used to use online censorship, but in an interview with ATI CEO Moez Chakchouk, he said the technology, installed in 2006, had not been extended or updated since 2011 and had been essentially abandoned in the face of a 50% increase in online traffic in Tunisia during that year.

“If the state wants to draw red lines for net freedom, it should first establish an independent authority to regulate the internet. Internet legislation should not be drafted without a regulation authority that creates balance, between public and individual interests. The state has the right to protect and eliminate defamation, but citizens have the right to freely express themselves. So we need balance, and if the government cannot create such balance, a conflict of interests will occur.”

Constitutional reform

The Tunisian National Constituent Assembly (NCA) is currently preparing a third version of the draft constitution, expected in the spring of 2013. The current version, published at the end of 2012 carries several articles that threaten human rights in general, raise questions about the Tunisia’s commitment to international conventions long ratified by the country and lack of sufficient guarantees for the independence of the judiciary. It also carries some improvements, such as the removal of articles that threatened freedom of expression by criminalizing “normalization” with Israel and clearer language to preserve equal rights for women in Tunisia.

The draft lacks – and would significantly benefit from – a defined section to serve as a Bill of Rights, and placed at the heart of the new Constitution. The constitution must provide a clear right for people to hold opinions and that right should not be subject to any restrictions.

The bill should define freedom of expression broadly and including the historic international right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas, while ensuring that this guarantee covers all types of expression and all modes of communication. The only legitimate restrictions on free expression must be determined by law and are necessary only when respecting the rights or reputations of others and for the protection of national security, public order or public health.

The constitution also should provide a legal mechanism to ensure that there is a right to freedom of information and there must be clear guarantees for freedom of religion for all people.

The constitution draft also fails to address the worst abuses of the Ben Ali regime in its relations with the judiciary. The guarantees for the independence of the judiciary are too limited; there is lack of clarity over the right for judges’ security of tenure and too much government authority over the definition of the conditions under which a judge can be dismissed.

An independent judiciary is key to institutionalising free expression in Tunisia and preventing people from being harassed or jailed for exercising their right to free expression,” said Riadh Guerfali, a co-founder of the participatory website Nawaat, a partner of Index on Censorship. “Ending impunity for those who attack free expression is critical as well.”

Some observers have raised questions about Article 15, which suggest that international conventions that Tunisia has ratified are only compulsory if they do not “contravene the constitution” in an unspecified way.

Under the Vienna Convention, when an international treaty had been ratified or approved it will become binding in domestic law. But the language as it stands may tempt judges and legislators to disregard these treaties on the pretext that they contradict the new constitution, Human Rights Watch said.

The importance of an independent judiciary was underlined by Guerfali, himself a lawyer. “Beyond formal guarantees of the right to freedom of expression and information in the Constitution and international instruments, what is key in today’s democracies is the case law.

“Indeed, in front of notions as vague as public morals, national security and public order, precedents established over decades have enabled the protection of fundamental rights. Yet, in Tunisia, such positive case law is lacking. There is no doubt that legal instruments should be set to prevent vague notions to undermine otherwise protected fundamental rights, including that to freedom of expression.”

– Reported by Rohan Jayasekera, Ghias Aljundi and Yousef Ahmed

World Press Freedom Day

European Union: Is the European Union faltering on media freedom?
Egypt: Post-revolution media vibrant but partisan
Brazil: Press confronts old foes and new violence

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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.

The results can be accessed at Arab Media Use Study.

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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 25 June 2012, the Monastir Court of Appeal upheld Mejri’s conviction.

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]”

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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.

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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

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The Tunisian Internet Agency was the Ben Ali regime’s instrument for censoring the web. Now, as it attempts to break ties with the past, Afef Abrougui talks to its CEO about the online challenges facing Tunisia

The regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was an enemy to internet freedom. Significant resources were spent on censorship of the web. The Tunisian Internet Agency (established in 1996, and known as the ATI by its French acronym), was the regime’s instrument to block access to online dissident voices and websites that criticised the regime. After the ousting of Ben Ali on 14 January 2011, Tunisian netizens have started to enjoy unprecedented, uncensored web access.

And as the ATI is trying to break all ties with its image as a web censor, questions are being raised about the role of the agency in post-revolution Tunisia, the destiny of censorship machinery, and the challenges to the internet in the country.

To answer these questions and more, Index on Censorship interviewed Moez Chakchouk, the ATI’s CEO.

There is a complaint lodged against ATI to filter pornographic content on the web. If ATI loses the case, how do you see the future of internet censorship in Tunisia? Will this case pave the way for other lawsuits asking the ATI to block other content?

Currently, there are other lawsuits against the ATI requiring it to filter other content.  There are lawsuits filed by investigating magistrates, similar to the complaint lodged by the military Tribunal in May. [In May, 2011, and following a verdict issued by the military tribunal, the ATI filtered five Facebook pages criticising the army]. We have received complaints to censor about 30 Facebook pages.

Who is lodging such complaints?

There are complaints lodged by one person against another one, for defamation, or for spreading false or unconfirmed information. In this case, an investigating magistrate has asked the agency to filter such content.

Under the former regime, ATI used to use censorship equipment. Questions are being raised about such equipment. Where is it now? What happened to it? Will it be ever used again?

The censorship equipment is still at the ATI headquarters. The machinery was bought by the government and installed at the ATI in 2006. In 2011, we did not buy anything new. The equipment requires an extension every year to face increase in Internet traffic. In 2011, we did not do anything; we could not buy more equipment because the government took back a subvention that was first allocated to the ATI.

What about the five Facebook pages that the Military tribunal asked you to filter in May?

We did filter those pages for some time but then we stopped for technical reasons.The global filters were not capable of covering all Internet traffic, which increased from 30 Gbits to 45 Gbits over last year. And for an increase of 15Gbits, we need two more filtering machines. When we tried to filter those pages with the available equipment, Internet service quality lowered. And we can’t allow this to happen because we have contracts with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) …We are somehow caught in between. Judicially, the agency is obliged to filter (…) but we could not do it. So we have decided not to filter until we could improve the equipment that we have.

Plus in August 2011 the agency faced another mechanical breakdown; the filtering machinery failed. And this is quite normal because over the past year no maintenance took place and we did not develop the equipment that we have.

Under the former regime, the ATI used to play the role of Internet censor. What is the role of the ATI in post-Ben Ali Tunisia? And how will it move from an agency that censors online dissident voices and content criticising the regime to an institution guaranteeing net freedom?

Right now there is no internet censorship. I’m against censorship. But in case there is a call for the comeback of censorship, it should be based on legal texts. And for the moment there are no such texts for the Internet in Tunisia.

The goal of the agency after the revolution is guaranteeing net neutrality. When we say net neutrality we should not care about the content.

Again we do not prefer Internet legislation because we are aware its risks.

If we want to develop the Internet in Tunisia we should not create obstacles. It is not urgent for Tunisia to draw red lines. This is my personal point of view independent of the agency, which has to remain neutral.

If there is to be Internet control in Tunisia, this control should be smart, transparent and for security reasons. The agency, used to carry out such control secretly. Today we are advocating absolute transparency. It would be better if a new public agency would be established and take charge of such a task. The ATI cannot guarantee internet neutrality and supervise the Internet at the same time. That is a conflict. This is my personal view as the legal representative of the ATI.

Do you know where the key technicians and officials who ran the old regime’s internet blocking and surveillance operation are? Are they still working?

The ATI is a technical agency where the censorship equipment was and is still installed. The agency has never been involved in deciding which websites should be censored. The employees of the agency know how to operate, and maintain the machinery; but they are not the ones who chose the websites to censor. They are only trained to maintain the equipment. Those who took such decisions were not ATI employees.

According to the information that I have; the Tunisian Agency for External Communication [known by its French acronym as the ATCE] was involved in taking such decisions (…) the ATCE had important transactions with the ATI. But these transactions were not documented as practices of censorship, but as website surveillance. But there is nothing documented that proves there were censorship related transactions between the two agencies.

The former ruling party, the Constitutional Democratic Party, (now dissolved, and known by its French acronym the as RCD) , the presidential palace and the security apparatus, might have been involved in such practices too. I don’t know exactly. There are no documents that reveal exact names and parties.

What about the foreign companies that the agency cooperated with under the former regime? Are you still cooperating with them?

We are no longer cooperating with the companies that the agency cooperated with in the past. Over the past year we put an end to the agency’s dealings with old markets, and we did not launch any new censorship-related projects.

Since the agency is filtering for public institutions, we have been trying to renew a maintenance contract with a filtering company. But we have faced enormous issues, and the contract has not been renewed yet. This company considered the Tunisian Internet agency a big partner … a technical partner that hosted equipment that does not belong to it, and that was used to undertake censorship and surveillance related tests. For these companies, Tunisia responded to their needs; a country close to Europe, and a place where everything was permitted, and no one dares to raise the question about the 404 error. But now, when a website hosted in Europe, or the USA does no longer exist, and 404 error appears on the computer screen, newspapers immediately report that “censorship is back” , and that “ATI is lying to us”. Truly, there is not a single functioning machine except the local filters, which are functioning for public institutions.

What is the name of this company?

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you the names of the companies. I read the contracts of these companies with the agency, and they contain confidentiality clauses.

What are the upcoming challenges for the ATI and for the internet in Tunisia?

When we check the ICT development index, we notice that the problem of Tunisia is the content. We have an advanced infrastructure but the content and apps are not developing for simple reasons. Before, to create a website there were obstacles — namely waiting for the ATCE approval, and censorship. People did not feel comfortable and safe to create content. It was impossible to create websites in Tunisia; it was a dream.

Obtaining a domain name for a website was impossible too. But, now any Tunisian citizen can go ask for the name of the domain that he or she chooses. There are no more political constraints. And there is no more censorship. People used to be afraid from authorities tracking them and their families down. This is why Tunisia was behind.

Obstacles that were established during a specific period should be abolished now. We should try to ensure an adequate development without constraints, and barriers. The internet is freedom, the internet is openness. Of course it can be badly used, but we will go through this over time.

Now, people are lodging complaints against each other for defamation. We are overreacting and I have fears that if we over react we will receive censorship orders.

Another challenge for the internet in Tunisia is regulation. The government should not be involved in internet regulation. Instead, an independent authority should take in charge such task. But we don’t have such authorities for the internet in Tunisia, so we have to raise this issue realistically.

If the state wants to draw red lines for net freedom, it should first establish an independent authority to regulate the internet. Internet legislation should not be drafted without a regulation authority that creates balance, between public and individual interests. The state has the right to protect and eliminate defamation, but citizens have the right to freely express themselves. So we need balance, and if the government cannot create such balance, a conflict of interests will occur.

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