Free expression in Tunisia 18 months on

04 May 12 | Middle East and North Africa

Members of the IFEX-TMG gathered in Tunis for World Press Freedom Day to mark the launch of four new initiatives to support Tunisian rights to freedom of expression, which remains under threat despite the gains of the past year.

The new work includes a literary anthology edited by the president of PEN Tunisia Naziha Rejiba, a training manual on online advocacy, a workshop for cartoonists, and a national newspaper and billboard campaign championing free expression rights as Tunisia’ Constituent Assembly continues to negotiate a new national constitution.

With hundreds of press freedom campaigners in Tunis alongside the IFEX-TMG to attend UNESCO’s annual World Press Freedom Day conference, the timeliness of these events was underlined by the sentencing of two young Facebook users to lengthy prison sentences and the fining of the head of a TV station for broadcasting the award-winning film Persepolis.

“Things have improved since the fall of the old regime, but there’s no question that the right to freedom of expression in Tunisia is not yet secure or safe,” said Rohan Jayasekera from IFEX-TMG member Index on Censorship.

The anthology, Fleeting Words, edited by Rejiba, the veteran dissident best known as ‘Om Ziad’, is published in partnership between IFEX-TMG, PEN Tunisia and Atlas Publications. Now available in Arabic, French and English editions will be published in June.
The IFEX-TMG also launched a training manual on online free expression campaign strategy developed by the IFEX-TMG member, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), with local partner, the Tunisian Centre for Freedom of the Press (CTPJ). This follows a series of training workshops, with the two most recent held in Sidi Bouzid and  Tunis.

This week also sees the launch of a major multi-media campaign in support of free expression rights developed in partnership with the Tunisian online media group Nawaat.org. Using 75 street billboards and adverts in national print and broadcast media, it will be seen by hundreds of thousands of Tunisians across the country.

nawaat-index-ifex-tmg-tunisia

Also this month, ANHRI and fellow IFEX-TMG member the Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI) organised a two-day workshop in the coastal Tunisian city of Sousse.

Sixteen digital and ink cartoonists from across Tunisia and the region, as CRNI Executive Director Dr Robert Russell put it, “all on the cutting edge of free speech,” gathered to exchange techniques and experiences.

The initiatives are part of the IFEX-TMG project Monitoring & Advocacy in Support of Independent Human Rights Defenders in Tunisia (2010-2012), managed by Index on Censorship and supported by the European Commission and Oxfam Novib.

The need for continuing work in the sector was underlined by the prosecution of Nabil Karoui, director of privately-owned Nessma TV for blasphemy and disturbing public order. The charges followed the station’s screening of the animated film Persepolis in October 2011. Karoui was fined 2,400 Tunisian dinars (961 GBP) on the charge of disturbing the public order, after protesters stormed Nessma TV.

“That Nabil Karoui avoided jail is not cause for celebration, the case should not have been brought to a court of law to begin with,” said Virginie Jouan, IFEX-TMG Chair.

The IFEX-TMG also expressed concern about the sentencing of Ghazi Ben Mohamed Beji and Jabeur Ben Abdallah Majri to over seven years in prison after Beji posted an online manuscript said to be critical of the Prophet, and Mejri reposted some of it.

Oman: Officials threaten to shut down newspaper

15 Aug 11 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost

 Omani officials are threatening to shut down Al-Zaman, an independent newspaper, after it published allegations of corruption in the Ministry of Justice.  Youssef al-Haj was interrogated for writing the articles questioning the Ministry’s decision to prevent Haroun al-Mukbeeli, a long-time civil servant, from appealing a refusal to provide him with an increase in salary and grade. He was eventually ordered to stop any protest of the decision. Following the release of the article, officials banned Al-Haj from writing, and he could potentially serve time in prison.  The editor-in-chief of the paper, Ibrahim al-Ma’mari, was also interrogated by officials.

Laying propaganda to rest

04 May 11 | Egypt, Middle East and North Africa

At last night’s UNESCO’s 2011 World Press Freedom Day event, a distinguished panel examined the freedom to report in light of the Arab Spring.

One of the panelists was Shahira Amin, the brave Egyptian news anchor who quit in protest at Mubarak spin. She made it clear that the Arab Spring won’t change the situation on the ground for many local journalists. “The media in the Arab world has pretty much always been controlled by the state,” she said. “Autocratic regimes use state media to tighten their grip on power and this of course has been particularly true in the case of Egypt and Mubarak; even before Mubarak, Egypt has lived for 60 years under military rule.”

Amin had a stockpile of horrifying stories about the propaganda run by the Egyptian media. One tale in particular stood out. During the protests, one of the “independent” channels hosted a young girl, whose face was covered, who claimed she’d received training outside the country before joining the protests in Tahrir Square. It was later discovered that she was a producer working for that same channel. The level of control exercised over the country’s media was absolute, so how to transform the Egyptian media into a credible source of information?

Amin said: “[At] the start of the uprising the media in Egypt was in denial and ignored the protest. You would switch on the telly and find a programme on tourism to Sinai. Then the media attacked the protesters. In the final week of the protests there was outside pressure on the new government that Mubarak had put in place to free up the media and do away with censorship. Google executive Wael Ghonim, a founder of one of the Facebook groups who had summoned the protesters to Tahrir, was hosted on one of the independent channels and he told the story of how he had been blindfolded and locked up behind bars for 12 days for starting the uprising. That was a turning point in the revolution. The next day, the number of protesters more than doubled and this says a lot about the power of a free media.

But Egypt is a country where 40 per cent of the population live below the poverty line of two dollars a day. These people have no access to the internet, nor satellite channels. The state media is their main source of information. The day Mubarak fell, the media shifted 180 degrees — they backpedalled furiously, falling over themselves to be on the side of the revolution, but their credibility had already been lost. It will take a long time for them to regain public trust. And yes, they are now hosting opposition figures who weren’t allowed to appear before, but these are the same employees with the same mindset. There needs to be a complete change in recruitment policies and a restructure of editorial practices and training for journalists.”

“Flashback” Shahira Amin, the number two at Nile television, explains why she resigned from Egyptian state television. “I am on the people’s side, not the regime’s”