26 Jul 07 | Statements
Jailed Tunisian dissident, writer and lawyer Mohamed Abbou was released from prison in Le Kef, where he had been held since his arrest in March 2005. He was sentenced to prison for three-and-a-half years for exposing torture in Tunisian prisons on the Internet. His release and that of more than 20 other political prisoners came on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Proclamation of the Republic of Tunisia, marked on 25 July.
It led to speculation that the release of the country’s highest profile domestic critic was timed simply to prevent the case from spoiling the international response to the independence celebrations.
Index on Censorship and other members of the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX) Tunisian Monitoring Group (TMG) have long campaigned for his release – including trying to visit him in prison in March.
Index chief executive Henderson Mullin urged the Tunisian authorities to cease the kind of aggressive and intimidating surveillance that Abbou’s wife Samia has endured since he was jailed in 2005.
‘Policemen have been climbing over the Abbou family balconies in the middle of the night, repeatedly, purely to terrorise them,’ said Mullin. ‘Police officers often harassed Mrs Abbou and the friends who accompany her for weekly visits with her husband at Kef prison, and they only let up when representatives of Index and other TMG members were watching in person.
‘It would be a disgrace if this kind of aggressive harassment is allowed to continue now Mr Abbou is free. He must be allowed to express his opinions freely.’
TMG Chair Carl Morten Iversen of Norwegian PEN assured Abbou that the TMG and other human rights groups will keep a close eye on the way Tunisian authorities will treat him and his family in the future. Tunisia’s repression of free expression is seen by many as the sole stain on the country’s otherwise tolerant and peaceful system. Increasingly its poor free speech record has become an issue that obstructs Tunisia’s routine relations with the EU and France.
Significantly, new French president Nicolas Sarkozy had raised Abbou’s case in meetings with Tunisian head of state Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali the week before.
Abbou told al Jazeera TV on the day of his release: ‘As a former prisoner of conscience, I would like to thank all those in Tunisia and the rest of the world who stood by my side during the ordeal I have been through. My release is the result of actions of resistance to oppression undertaken by Tunisians capable of saying no to a regime in violation of basic human rights. The Tunisian Constitution and international human rights law guarantee the right to criticise the government, as long as there are human rights abuses and corruption.’
But he added: ‘The lack of freedom led some young people to use violence which I strongly denounce.’
Abbou was jailed for three-and-a-half-years for posting an article on the Tunisnews website in August 2004 comparing the torture of political prisoners in Tunisia to that perpetrated by US soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But observers at his trial suspected the sentence was imposed in response to a different article he had posted online a few days before his arrest, in which he criticised an invitation to Israeli leader Ariel Sharon to attend a UN summit in Tunis.
The IFEX-TMG continues to call on the Tunisian authorities to allow writers, journalists, web loggers and publishers to express themselves freely without fear of persecution or imprisonment in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Tunisia is a signatory.
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01 Jan 07 | News and features
Back in 2005 Kofi Annan, then Secretary-General of the UN, stated that the holding of the WSIS in Tunisia offered “a good opportunity for the Government of Tunisia to address various human rights concerns, including those related to freedom of opinion and expression.”
More than one year after the WSIS was held in Tunisia, the Tunisian government has clearly failed to do this, according to members of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG), which includes Index on Censorship.
The 16 members of the IFEX-TMG are appealing to incoming UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, to remind the Government of Tunisia of its international obligations. “Tunisia, since being an elected member of the newly-created United Nations Council of Human Rights, has an additional obligation to respect its international commitments in the field of freedom of expression,” say the members of the TMG.
Sadly, the state of freedom of expression in Tunisia is as poor, if not poorer, in early 2007 as it was in late 2005 when the WSIS was held in Tunis,” said Carl Morten Iversen, Secretary General of Norwegian PEN, and Chair of the IFEX-TMG.
Members of the TMG remain deeply concerned by the ongoing harassment of writers, journalists, editors and human rights defenders in Tunisia. Consequently, members of the TMG are once more calling the Tunisian government to bring an immediate end to the persecution of writers, journalists, and human rights defenders, including Sihem Bensedrine, Naziha Rjiba, Moncef Marzouki, Lotfi Hajji and Abdallah Zouari.
n addition, they are repeating their plea for the immediate and unconditional release of internet writer and lawyer Mohammed Abbou who is currently serving a three-and-a-half year prison sentence for criticising Tunisian President Ben Ali in an article posted on the Internet.
To respect its international commitments, the Tunisian government should also release all banned books and publications, should stop censoring books, and should put and end to the blocking of websites,” said Ana Maria Cabanellas, President of the International Publishers Association (IPA).
TMG members also highlighted concerns about the Tunisian government’s censorship of deadly clashes between security forces and armed groups in the end of December 2006 and in early January 2007 in the Southern suburbs of Tunis.
The IFEX-TMG therefore calls on the Tunisian authorities to allow writers, journalists, web loggers and publishers to express themselves freely without fear of persecution or imprisonment in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Tunisia is a signatory.
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15 Jun 80 | Magazine Editions, Volume 9.03 June 1980
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Africa & Argentina, the June 1980 issue of Index on Censorship magazine
By Ahmed Rajab
We devote a large part of this issue to dissent in literature and the arts in Africa, and the response to it by the ruling circles in a number of countries. This may seem an ambitious project
in the sense that Africa is not a homogeneous whole but a continent with different social systems, beset with a high degree of illiteracy, a multitude of languages and a variety of cultural practices.
There is another sense, however, in which Africa as a whole can be discussed under this one rubric: the artist in almost all the African countries is viewed with suspicion the moment he takes on the role of a social critic. This despite the fact that traditionally, whenever a poet or a dramatist acted as a social critic and a ‘ chronicler of current events ‘, he was protected by society, the tribe. The earlier griot of West Africa or the Swahili poet of East Africa, could indulge in criticism of the social order without undue worry about the consequences — the more so if his views were shared by the rest of his community. The eighteenth century Kenyan coastal poet Muyaka wa Muhaji was famous for his impromptu improvisations of anti-establishment poetry. Cultural activists were more than just individual performers; they acted as the eyes, ears and mouthpieces of their societies. Although griots were originally the spokesmen of local kings, whom they spent days praising, they later extended their role to that of historians and commentators on history. In some parts of Senegambia they are known to have been responsible for bringing down a number of tribal chiefs. They were the conscience of society; they were there to see that society functioned as it should, and if it didn’t they tried to put things right. Not that everybody, rulers included, agreed with them. But if they did not, then their poetic broadsides were answered by other poems defending what the original poems or songs attacked. Rich powerful families instead of engaging in physical warfare with their enemies would send their griots to fight with ‘words’ the griots of their rivals.
Nowadays if a poet, novelist or playwright incurs official displeasure, he will almost invariably be arrested and imprisoned, as happened to the Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o, or be permanently silenced as was the case with the Ugandan playwright Byron Kawadwa. If he is lucky, the dissident writer may escape to another country, and die in exile, like the Guinean novelist Camara Laye.
Colonialism has a lot to do with the present predicament of the artist in post-colonial Africa. Not only did colonialism subjugate the culture of the colonised by imposing its own cultural hegemony in order to facilitate colonial rule, but it also used state power to suppress anti colonial dissent as expressed in the performing arts. With slight modifications, the same coercive instruments of state are now being employed by post-colonial African governments to suppress any anti-establishment critique offered by the arts. The situation is the more serious because, in the absence of a legal opposition in most of these countries, literature and the arts provide the only platform for nonconformist ideas.
It is the ruling circles in these countries which seek to monopolise the ‘ right and correct’ ideas. Ideas that are judged to be hostile are viewed as subversive. The performing arts are also regarded as dangerous once their thematic preoccupations are not acceptable to the ministries of ‘ national’ culture that have sprung up after independence in almost all the African countries.
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In fact, it is the gradual thematic shift in literature and the arts from historical self-glorification to contemporary socio-political realities that has been responsible for increasing official intolerance towards them. But it is an aspect of totalitarianism not to tolerate dissenting views, be it in South Africa under the apartheid system or in any of the many one-party states of black Africa.
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The comparison may not be altogether fair, but the very fact that one can talk of such a comparison sheds a poor light on those countries that have for decades championed the cause of political freedom, free expression of ideas, freedom of association, and human rights in general for colonised Africa.
Admittedly the human rights situation has improved in a number of African countries in the past year. The Organisation for African Unity has recognised the urgent need for the establishment of a Commission on Human Rights for Africa, and there has, in general, been an increase in the awareness of human rights in connection with national development. But although Ngugi wa Thiong’o was released from prison in Kenya, a number of writers and poets are still incarcerated in South Africa and Morocco. In fact, Morocco is the only independent African country with a high number of writers and poets among its prison population. It is not irrelevant, of course, that in a country which supposedly has a multi-party democracy, no opposition party can be legalised without King Hassan’s assent. Those who operate outside the permitted limits are regarded as a ‘ danger to the security of the State’. The same could be said of Egypt, where President Sadat created his own opposition party and forced no less than 220 members of his ruling party to join it. The Egyptian dissident poet, Ahmed Fouad Negm {see Index on Censorship 2/1979 and 2/1980) is still on the run, evading the police. Egyptian journalists who disagree with President Sadat, even those working in the institutionalised press, have been silenced. In Senegal, it is no less a person than the enlightened poet-President Leopold Sedar Senghor, who saw fit to determine how many opposition parties, and of what nature, he was willing to tolerate. And it was Senghor who banned a film by the noted film-maker, Sembene Ousmane, ostensibly because he disagreed with the spelling of the film’s title (see Index on Censorship 4/1979, p. 57). The situation of the arts and literature in Africa could be comical but for its tragic consequences.
We have tried in this issue to portray some aspects of the difficult situation in which the writer and artist operate in the continent. Although there is these days a tendency to separate North African literature and culture from the rest of Africa, we do not apologise for including them. After all, the very name ‘Africa’ originated from that part of the continent. More important is the fact that the predicament of the writer in North Africa is no different from that of his colleagues south of the Sahara. They live subject to the same fears, and they share the same dreams and the same hope:of being free to operate as artists.
As far as the overall situation is concerned, the picture that emerges from these pages is sobering. But we can still hope that respect for human rights will continue to rise in the continent, and that the artist and writer will eventually be accorded his freedom. In the meantime, dissident artists, if not murdered, continue to be imprisoned, exiled, or silenced by self-censorship.
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The oral tradition provides outlets for dissent which have been
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South Africa’s education system, meant to bolster apartheid, may destroy it[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”93873″ img_size=”full” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064228508533914″][vc_column_text]
If you think censorship is tough in the Republic, take a look at the
manipulation of information in its colony.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
