**Updates IFEX alert of 10, 6 and 4 April 2000. For further 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)- In a letter to Prime […]
**Updates IFEX alert of 10, 6 and 4 April 2000. For further 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)- In a letter to Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi, RSF has expressed its indignation with regard to the “evacuation by police of journalist Taoufik Ben Brick and his supporters from the offices of the Aloès publishing house”. RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard asked the prime minister “to end the harassment of Taoufik Ben Brick, his family and friends.”
According to the information collected by RSF, on Monday 10 April 2000, in the afternoon, some 100 police officers entered the offices of the Aloès publishing house, where Ben Brick has been on a hunger strike since 3 April. Following an order by the governor, police closed the offices after violently evacuating the persons who were staying there with the journalist. The governor justified this closing by suggesting that the 9 April unauthorised meeting at the Aloès publishing house headquarters, which focused on freedom of expression issues, had “disturbed the public order.”
By going on a hunger strike, Ben Brick, a correspondent of RSF, the French daily “La Croix” and the Infosud and Syfia news agencies, hopes to have his passport returned to him. It was seized in April 1999. The journalist is also protesting the steady harrasment to which he has been subjected. Anonymous threatening phone calls, his phone and fax lines cut, his home kept under police surveillance, physical attacks, this has become the journalist’s daily lot over the last two years.
