**For background information on the Taoufik Ben Brick case, see IFEX alerts of 19 and 8 October, 30 September, 12 July, 27, 25, 20 and 14 May, 28 April, 29 and 13 January 1999 and 24 June 1998** (RSF/IFEX) – The following is a 3 April 2000 RSF press release: Independent journalist Taoufik Ben Brick […]
**For background information on the Taoufik Ben Brick case, see IFEX alerts of 19 and 8 October, 30 September, 12 July, 27, 25, 20 and 14 May, 28 April, 29 and 13 January 1999 and 24 June 1998**
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is a 3 April 2000 RSF press release:
Independent journalist Taoufik Ben Brick begins hunger strike
Reporters sans frontières denounces the Tunisian authorities’ refusal to issue a new passport to independent journalist Taoufik Ben Brick. A correspondent with Reporters sans frontières, the French daily La Croix and the Infosud and Syfia press agencies, Taoufik Ben Brick begins a hunger strike today, Monday 3 April, to protest the Ministry of the Interior’s refusal to issue him a passport.
In a country where press freedom does not exist, Taoufik Ben Brick, who works for foreign media, is a favoured target of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime. In recent months, the regime has further increased its use of intimidating measures against the journalist. On 20 May 1999, Taoufik Ben Brick was attacked in front of his residence by three police officers in civilian clothes who were armed with a club and chains. Hospitalised, the journalist could not use his right arm for one month, during which time it was impossible for him to write. This attack took place a day after the publication of an article about Khmaïs Ksila, vice-president of the Tunisian League of Human Rights, in the Swiss daily Le Temps. On 28 April, while he was preparing to fly to Switzerland, where he had been invited to attend the festival “Médias nord-sud” (“North-South Media”), a customs officer surreptitiously tore a page out of his passport and confiscated it. Taoufik Ben Brick was forced to cancel his trip. On 11 October, the journalist’s brother-in-law was attacked by a neighbour for no apparent reason. The police refused to register the complaint. The next day, the same neighbour, encouraged by this impunity, severely beat a parent of the journalist in broad daylight in the street. His sister and her two daughters, who are 12 and 7 years old, respectively, were also brutalised and insulted in public. On 24 March 2000, Taoufik Ben Brick, once again invited to attend the “Médias nord-sud” festival, wrote a letter to the Minister of the Interior, asking that his passport be returned to him. The minister’s response came without delay: four days later, his telephone line was cut.
Anonymous telephone threats, the cutting of telephone and fax lines, police surveillance of his residence, a vandalised car, insults and pressure during interrogations at the Ministry of the Interior, this is the journalist’s daily lot in life. In September 1999, Taoufik Ben Brick said of his suffering: “The thousand eyes which spy, scutinise and verify are focused squarely on you. You become the object of their efforts on behalf of a monstrous machine. One feels powerless before them. They know they have the power on their side. Even if you are not afraid, how can you stay serene and relaxed when the cops are clinging on to you like ticks? How can one live faced with daily adversity without sinking into psychosis?”
Today, like many other human rights defenders in Tunisia, such as Sihem Ben Sédrine and Fatma Ksila, who also started a hunger strike on 28 March, Taoufik is expressing his outrage against President Ben Ali’s police state. Reporters sans frontières asks the Tunisian authorities to see to it that the harassment of Taoufik Ben Brick and his family is ended once and for all. The organisation also asks that they issue a passport to the journalist as soon as possible so that he may travel and exercise his profession freely.
