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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.
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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Africa & Argentina, the June 1980 issue of Index on Censorship magazine
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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
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