11 Apr 12 | Middle East and North Africa
On 11 April the Tunisian Cabinet lifted a ban on protesting on Habib Bourguiba Avenue in Tunis.
In a communiqué released on 28 March, the Interior Ministry prohibited all “forms of collective expression” on the avenue, after receiving “complaints” from a number of businesses, and citizens.
After the Ministry’s controversial decision, there were two attempts to break the ban. On 7 April, dozens of unemployed graduates sought to protest on the avenue, but police used tear gas and batons to disperse them. Two days later, police cracked down on demonstrators who attempted to celebrate Martyrs’ Day on the same avenue.
Major buildings, such as the once so feared Interior Ministry, and the French Embassy are located on the avenue.
Habib Bourguiba Avenue has a symbolic significance for Tunisians. It was there, when thousands of anti Ben Ali regime protesters gathered on 14 January 2011. Ever since that day the avenue, once a commercial and a touristic attraction, has turned into an epicentre of protests.
10 Apr 12 | Middle East and North Africa
Anti-government protesters clashed with police in the streets of Tunis over the weekend as they attempted to defy a ban prohibiting demonstrations on the capital’s main avenue.
Protesters raising anti-government slogans took to the streets on 9 April to celebrate Martyrs’ Day in commemoration of those killed by French troops on the same date in 1938, but were soon faced with a tough crack down from police.
Tear gas and batons were used to disperse protesters who were in defiance of the ban, introduced by the Interior Ministry on 28 March, prohibiting demonstrations on Habib Bourguiba Avenue. On 14 January 2011, thousands of protesters gathered on the emblematic avenue to call for the fall of the regime of Ben Ali the emblematic avenue.
While covering the Martyrs’ Day protest and the clashes between protesters and police, bloggers and journalists got a taste of police brutality. Monji Khadhraoui, General Secretary of the National Syndicate for Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) told Index on Censorship that 13 journalists from both national and foreign press were assaulted.
Meriem Ben Ghazi, a young journalist for Tunisia Live was verbally abused and threatened by three police officers in plain clothes, whilst using an iPad to live stream the protest on the interent. She was assaulted even though she had her press card with her, and told police that she was a journalist.
Ben Ghazi to Index: “one police officer said to me ‘If you do not go home, we will beat you.’ They struck the Ipad with their batons, and they also tried to arrest our cameraman. We were not the only ones. We saw many journalists being assaulted.”
Julie Schneider, the Tunis correspondent for the French newspaper Le Point was also assaulted, despite telling police that she was a journalist. In a testimony published on the website of the newspaper, Schneider described the abuse by the police:
“In few minutes, I fell to the ground. I was beaten on my back, and on my behind…I was only thinking about my camera, my memory card, and the shots that I took. I do not know how much time it took…Finally, I could hear my camera being smashed on the sidewalk…A representative of the Democratic Modernist Pole intervened and screamed that I was a journalist. I repeated the same thing, but nothing. I was beaten again on my head.”
The SNJT decided to stop its coverage of all the activities of the Interior Ministry and those of Ennhdha (the ruling party) which the syndicate accuses of “sending its militias” to assault journalists. Zied el-Hani, a journalist, and an executive member of the SNJT told private radio station Mosaique FM that he was verbally abused by “militias belonging to Ennahdha”.
Prominent blogger Fatma Riahi (who uses the alias Fatma Arabicca) was beaten by a police officer in plain clothes, and she was immediately transferred to a hospital.
“We took to the streets to demand our right to free expression, but the police of Larayedh (Minister of Interior) — no longer the police of Ben Ali — the police of Ennhdha oppressed us, because we do not hold the same opinion”, she said.
The French language web magazine, Kapitalis also reported that its editor-in-chief Zohra Abid was beaten by a police officer.
Almost 15 months after the fall of the autocratic rule of Ben Ali, journalists are still being assaulted for doing their job. The battle for freedom of speech and a free press seems to be far from over in the birth place of the so-called Arab Spring.
05 Apr 12 | Uncategorized
On 28 March a primary court in the coastal city of Mahdia, sentenced two atheist friends, Jabeur Mejri and Ghazi Beji, to seven and a half years in prison, and to a fine of 1200 Tunisian Dinars (around USD $800) each, over the use of social networks to publish content deemed blasphemous. Mejri,and Beji were put on trial following a complaint lodged by a group of residents in Mahdia.
Private radio station Shems FM reported that Mejri and Beji published cartoons insulting the Prophet.
While Jabeur Mejri is in prison, his friend Ghazi Beji, who was sentenced in absentia, is at large. He fled to Athens to avoid prosecution. According to atheistica.com Beji wrote a book called “the Illusion of Islam”, and published it on the internet. His friend Mejri, wrote another book and “cursed the government, Islamists, Prophet Mohamed, drew a pig sleeping on the Kaaba [a sacred building for Muslims], and expressed his hatred towards Arabs and his love to Israel and its prime minister Natanyaho [sic]”.
Mejri, and Beji were convicted of “insulting others via public communication networks”, and spreading publications and writings that could “disturb public order” and “ moral transgression”.
The League of Tunisian Humanists condemned the sentence and complained about the “unclear circumstances that surrounded the trial, since one of the defendants fled”.
Olfa Riahi, a blogger and a journalist, who broke the story on the Tunisian blogosphere, told Index on Censorship that she is looking forward to see more associations getting together to support Mejri and Beji. “Many associations have started to react, but I would like to see [human rights group group] Liberty and Equity, as an association with an Islamic background, reacting too”, she said.
Bochra Bel Haji Hmida, a renowned Tunisian lawyer and women rights activist, will defend Mejri and Beji in their appeal.
Though the 2011 uprising has permitted Tunisians to freely express themselves, and criticize the political system; Islam has turned out to be a red line for the predominantly Muslim country, where censorship is taking on a religious tone.
30 Mar 12 | Middle East and North Africa
“Our theatre is the street,” said Nasreddine Ben Maâti, President of Eich el-Fan (“live the art” in English), a young association dedicated to street art. “Tunisian citizens are boycotting theaters and cinemas so we decided to go for the people instead of them coming to us,” he added.
Their goal is to tour Tunisia and perform in the streets of the interior and marginalised regions, where the wave of protests that toppled the 23 year rule of President Zeine el-Abidin Ben Ali began.
On 22 March, the association organized an artistic event named Occupy Bourguib Art Street on the capital’s main avenue (Habib Bourguiba Avenue). It was not long before police intervened to disperse the young artists playing music, dancing and drawing graffiti. “Two police officers came toward us and asked us to leave, they were saying what we are doing was prohibited, and told us to go home”, Nasreddine told Index. “They only know two expressions: it is prohibited, and go home”, he added.
The artists refused to leave, and police used to tear gas to disperse them. A photographer who was filming police physically abusing an artist drawing graffiti on the floor was arrested and held for one hour. In the police station, he was beaten by four police officers, according to the association.
On the same day, Wissem Khemiri, a graffiti artist and member of the association Live the Art was taken to a police station when a general in the army spotted him drawing graffiti on the wall of a Tunis art school. The content of the graffiti seems to have irritated this general and opened some old wounds: Khemiri’s drawing was dedicated to Abd el-Aziz Skik, an army general who is believed to have been murdered following an order from former President Ben Ali. Khemiri was suggesting that some figures in the army collaborated with the former regime to kill Skik — on the graffiti, he wrote “the betrayed general”. He was freed the same day of his arrest, but the army general who arrested him accused him of “assaulting the dignity of the national army”.
The struggle of artists who choose to perform in the streets did not end there. On 25 March the Tunisian Association for Art Graduates, in collaboration with Live the Art and many more associations organised a cultural manifestation named “the People Want Theatre”, to celebrate World Theatre Day.
Tunisian artists and actors who gathered outside the capital’s main theater to take part in the event were assaulted. This time, however, the assaulters were right wing extremists, and the events occurred under the eyes of police.
“Police officers were watching, they only intervened four hours later,” said Lobna Noomene, a singer who witnessed the incident .
A Salafi extremist hit her on her head while she was rushing to get inside the theatre. “It is not the physical assault that hurts, but what really hurts is how someone has the courage to unfairly assault someone else ,” she told Index.
Artists in Tunisia have fears about the rise of ultra-conservative forces that seek to ban art works that they deem insulting to the values of Islam. On 26 June 2011, ultra-conservative protesters attacked a movie theatre that was airing Neither God nor Master, a film by Tunisian director Nadia el-Fani. The film’s name was later on changed to Secularism by God’s Willing. Meanwhile, the CEO of Nessma TV is currently on trial over the airing of the French-Iranian film Persepolis.
For Noomene, the ministries of interior and culture are to blame too. She explains:
For Salafists, everything is haram [forbidden]. But, the Interior Ministry should take responsibility for what happened, it should not have allowed for two events that are ideologically antagonist to take place in the same location on the same time. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Culture is out of touch with the artist, it does not have a real project to ensure the safety of artists, and it did not take a real position for what happened. But we will not put an end to our shows, and our manifestations. We will not stop living.
