(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF report reviewing the current state of press freedom in Tunisia: Tunisia – “Silence, we’re gagging the press” Censorship: a keystone of the Ben Ali regime Since the ousting of president Habib Bourguiba by Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali on November 7, 1987, the regime has sought to control the […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF report reviewing the current state of
press freedom in Tunisia:
Tunisia – “Silence, we’re gagging the press”
Censorship: a keystone of the Ben Ali regime
Since the ousting of president Habib Bourguiba by Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali on
November 7, 1987, the regime has sought to control the flow of information –
and it has succeeded. Today, press freedom is non-existent in Tunisia. News
management is a fundamental building block of the police state set up by Mr
Ben Ali: it is handled directly by a unit working in the presidential
palace and more generally by an information agency run by the prime
minister’s office, replacing the State Secretariat for Information abolished
in October 1997. All the institutions that could constitute countervailing
powers to the regime – the judiciary, parliament, voluntary associations,
trade unions, political parties, universities, etc. – have been
systematically placed under government control. The system is locked in
place by a combination of fear and corruption. The regime has used both
straightforward gagging methods such as court orders, seizures of
newspapers, withholding advertising and arresting journalists, and “rewards”
for compliance, including subsidies and big advertising budgets for the
press, and social benefits and promotions for journalists.
Towards the end of the presidency of Habib Bourguiba (1977-1987), several
titles such as Le Phare, Al-Raï and Le Maghreb, jealous of their
independence and their critical voice, testified to the existence of a
relative freedom of the press. Even if there were still taboos, like the
presidency-for-life of Bourguiba and the influence of his wife, Ouassila
Bourguiba, these newspapers developed, through guest opinion columns and
caricatures, a culture of irreverence among journalists. But this press of
opinion did not survive the pressures exerted by the new president. As early
as December 1987, one month after Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali took power, the
weekly Arabic-language magazine Al-Raï, founded in 1977, disappeared from
the news-stands. After a special issue which included an article on the
capacity of the new regime to tolerate criticism was held at the printing
works, the pressure brought to bear on its director finally forced the
magazine to close down. In 1988, Le Phare, a French-language satirical
weekly founded in 1979, ceased publication after five issues of its new
series. The sixth issue was confiscated because of an article on leading
political personalities. In November, the newspaper had denounced state
pressures in the following terms: “The state proclaims in public, to burnish
its image, freedoms which it suppresses in secret, to bolster its control.
The informal limits set by this mix of seduction and intimidation are, in
general, communicated in such a way that no physical trace is left of the
summons or telephone call warning [journalists] not to mention unrecognized
political parties, pointing out the embarrassment that [an article] would
cause such-and-such a country, or the inadvisability of an article devoted
to an undesirable leader of the opposition”.
In March 1991, Le Maghreb, a weekly magazine in French and Arabic, was
suspended and its director, Omar S’habou, was sentenced to fourteen months
in prison for “slander, publishing false news and insulting a member of the
government”. The magazine had since 1989 resisted government pressure aimed
at changing its stance on the Islamists: changes had, for example, been
required to the cover of the June 16, 1989 issue, which gave equal
prominence to government members and the leaders of an unrecognized
opposition party.
The government-controlled press imposed a total blackout on news about the
five or six associations, out of the six thousand or so in the country,
which were trying to cling on to their independence. Their press releases
are almost never printed by the media, except the newspapers of some
political parties (see below). For example, in 1993 the Tunisian Association
of Democratic Women (ATFD) wanted to publish the proceedings of an
international conference held in Tunis on violence against women. Although
two thousand copies had been printed, the interior ministry refused, without
explanation, to deliver copyright authorization to the printer – and the
documents are still not available. Not being affiliated with the regime,
the ATFD is not only shunned by the press, but its members have been the
target of abusive campaigns in the gutter press, in particular Al-Hadath.
But the censorship is not restricted to political questions, and in
particular the human rights situation – it also covers cultural subjects.
Since 1995, when he was removed from his post as director of the academy of
music, composer Mohamed Guerfi, who is renowned nationwide, has been
forbidden to give concerts and his music is not played on state radio and
television. From June to August 1998, the musician published cultural
columns in the daily El-Sabah. Five articles, which castigated the cultural
policy of the all-powerful administration, and in particular the waste of
public funds, provoked the culture ministry into suing him for “slander”. On
April 24, 1999, the composer was fined 200 dinars (163 dollars), reduced to
50 dinars (40 dollars) on appeal.
To escape from this leaden weight of repression, people have developed
“auto-information” reflexes: the slightest tidbit of unofficial news is
spread by word of mouth, articles from the foreign press, received by fax
and photocopied, circulate clandestinely, foreign television channels,
especially satellite broadcasts, are reaching an ever-greater audience. The
latest example: in March 1999, an article on “the responsibility of the
Moslem intellectual” by Mohamed Talbi, a leading Islamic scholar and dean of
the University of Tunis, opposing a 1996 circular requiring academics to
submit the subject of seminars, the list of participants and the texts of
their papers to the education ministry, was first widely distributed
hand-to-hand, then published by the London Arabic-language daily El-Hayat.
A padlocked information system
The Tunisian press is now characterised by a uniformity of tone. Public
opinion is totally cut off from information. For example, no Tunisian is
able to give an estimate of the level of unemployment. Any information
likely to constitute a criticism of the regime is, in fact, prohibited. Even
in areas which seem far removed from the central concerns of the regime,
such as the environment and the country’s cultural heritage, censorship
prevails. In March 1996, the weekly El-Chourouk published a seemingly
harmless report on the shoe-shine trade in Tunis. The article, which was
reprinted by Moroccan newspapers, was criticised as “damaging the country’s
image”, and the author was questioned by the police and detained overnight.
Politically sensitive articles are sent to the interior ministry before they
are published. But journalists often anticipate this rule and
self-censorship prevails in the newsrooms.
All the daily newspapers, without exception, publish a photograph of
President Ben Ali on their front page every day. There is hardly any
difference between their headlines. Some headlines noted in the June 18,
1999 issue of La Presse describe an ideal country: “A model of freedom as
regards religious worship”, “Increase in the capacity of the national
merchant fleet”, “The Italian Prime Minister visits Tunisia: the level of
development attained by Tunisia is admirable”, “Mad Coca-Cola: Tunisia is
not affected”, “President Khatami hails the successes achieved by Tunisia in
various fields”. The leading article of the same issue is devoted to singing
the praises of President Ben Ali: “The reforms undertaken in Tunisia since
the Change (on November 7, 1987) are characterised by global and
forward-looking vision. But they are characterised especially by the
humanistic dimension conferred on the revival. (…) The interest shown by
President Ben Ali in installing and disseminating a culture of human rights
confirms a choice of civilisation established as a daily practice”.
Many observers say the pressure of censorship reached its peak in 1991, at
the time of the Gulf War, when white spaces replacing deleted articles
spread throughout the press. But as early as 1990, the fight against the
Islamic movement, which surfaced in the late 1970s, became the pretext for
introducing draconian censorship. This anti-Islamic discourse is a keynote
in the propaganda of the Ben Ali regime, aimed at both Tunisian democrats
and friendly governments, in particular that of France. The attitude to be
adopted towards the Islamic “danger” was a genuine line of cleavage within
the democratic camp, causing splits which the regime took advantage of. The
official line endeavoured to present President Ben Ali as the only “bulwark”
against the Islamic peril, brandishing the bogey-man of the civil war in
Algeria. In the name of the fight against the Islamists, the defenders of
human rights and the Tunisian opposition backed the regime and closed their
eyes to its exactions. Those who refused to go along with this
diabolisation, which was used to justify the “eradication” of the Islamists,
were accused of being their allies. Debate was thus completely paralysed.
Since 1991, sentences have ranged from fifteen to twenty years’ imprisonment
for “association threatening law and order”. The legal arsenal aimed
expressly at the Islamists was further reinforced in 1995 with a new harsh
law on terrorism: membership of the Islamist movement is now a criminal
offence.
From 1991 onwards, Islamic journalists have been systematically repressed.
Two of them are still in prison: Hamadi Jebali, editor of weekly Al Fajr,
semi-official organ of the Islamist movement Ennahda, was sentenced by the
Tunis military court to sixteen years in prison for “aggression with intent
to change the nature of the State” and “membership of an illegal
organisation”. He had just served a one-year prison term after being found
guilty on January 31, 1991, of publishing an article criticising the system
of military tribunals, one of the tools used by the regime to repress the
Islamists. Abdellah Zouari, another Al Fajr journalist, was arrested on
April 12, 1991, and sentenced to eleven years in prison for “membership of
an illegal organisation”. The two journalists were tried on August 28, 1992,
along with 277 members of Ennahda, for taking part in an “Islamist plot”.
International standards of fair legal process were not observed (vague
charges, torture, arbitrary detention, limited access to lawyers, etc.).
Since their trial, Hamadi Jebali and Abdellah Zouari have been jailed in
poor conditions: overcrowded cells, difficulties in getting medication,
obstacles to family visits, and pressure on their lawyers.
A monolithic press
At first sight, the press in Tunisia seems diversified, with the official
media, privately-owned newspapers and the organs of political parties
existing side by side. But the reality is far from reflecting an effective
pluralism: whether private or state-run, the press is subject to the same
rules. The media operate under state influence and print endless laudatory
articles about the person of the President and the policy of the government.
Only the information disseminated by the presidential palace is publishable.
The Tunis Africa Presse (TAP) agency is the main, sometimes the only, source
of news for the country’s media. It is content to relay information verbatim
from the president’s office, which vets the reports. Most of the news put
out concerns the official activities of the president and the government.
Official statements by the ministries are printed as is, with no
journalistic processing or checking with independent sources. In February
1994, two journalists were suspended for three days for mistakenly using two
foreign agency reports on the presidential candidature of Moncef Marzouki.
Journalists say the agency is simply a “letter-box” for the ministries.
Some TAP correspondents covering government departments are actually paid by
the presidency as press attachés. At the time of the last local elections in
May 1995, the RCD (Ben Ali’s Democratic Constitutional Assembly) was the
only party whose full electoral platform was carried by the agency.
Similarly, the Tunisian Radio and Television Broadcasting Corporation (ERTT)
puts out only information supporting government policy. In 1987, television
experienced a short period of liberalisation: television newscasts,
socio-cultural programmes, and debates giving airtime to people holding
different opinions, were broadcast. But this pluralism was reduced to
nothing when the managing director of the ERTT was dismissed because of a
programme on the Customs service. Since then, all political parties, even
legal ones, that do not have backing from the regime, are excluded from
public television. Members of the government and the RCD receive blanket
coverage. Retransmission of the French television channel, France 2, has
been under government control since 1989, and Italy’s Spoke Uno since 1960:
for example, the France 2 evening newscast, which is likely to air subjects
the government finds sensitive, has been permanently replaced by Canal 21,
an Arabic youth programme. However, the channel’s overnight newscast is
broadcast the next evening. Spoke Uno broadcasts have several times been
suspended for a few months following criticisms of Tunisian policy.
The two government newspapers, the French-language La Presse and the
Arabic-language El-Sahafa, and the two organs of the RCD, the
French-language Renouveau and the Arabic-language Houria, purvey a fixed
official line whose lack of interest explains the disaffection of their
readership, which contradicts fanciful official circulation claims of 20,000
copies per issue; reliable sources but the figure at less than 3,000.
The private press, which stood out by its independent tone, bore the full
brunt of the regime’s attacks. Those papers that resisted being forced into
the government’s straitjacket have disappeared (see above, Le Phare, Al-Raï
and Le Maghreb). Pressure is exerted particularly through printing works (as
in the case of Le Maghreb). The Dar Al-Anwar print works refused to produce
Al-Fajr and the La Presse printer SNIPE handed out the same treatment to
Al-Maouqif. Al-Badil was boycotted by the printing works of the UGTT trade
union, which had previously handled it. To survive, the other papers had to
accept government supervision and the standardisation of their content, as
for example the bilingual weekly Réalités, which had been a quality magazine
(in August 1994, its editor was called in by the public prosecutor for
publishing a main feature on the taboo question of virginity in Tunisian
society). An anecdote reveals the depth of unease among the journalists on
the magazine: during a discussion with representatives of Reporters Sans
Frontières, a previously gracious and cordial journalist became nervous and
suddenly realized that he had lots of other things to do when he was asked
how much freedom he was allowed.
At the same time as the traditional press was being whipped into line, a
gutter press mushroomed, full of scandals, sensational tidbits, “people”
articles and more or less accurate crime stories, whose basic job is “to
occupy the media ground and the stupefy public”, as one observer put it. One
of them, the Arabic-language weekly El-Hadath, outdid its rivals with its
full-scale smear campaigns against opponents of the regime and defenders of
human rights.
Before they were systematically brought to heel, newspapers close to the
political parties had a certain amount of room to manoeuvre. Shortly after
the 1989 elections, two newspapers of the unrecognized opposition were
authorized to appear: Al-Fajr, semi-official organ of the Islamist party
Ennahda, and Al-Badil, newspaper of the Tunisian Communist Workers’ Party
(POCT, extreme-left). But when these two parties were suppressed by the
regime and their militants sentenced to heavy prison terms or forced
underground, these two newspapers were banned. Hamma Hammami, leader of the
POCT and managing director of Al-Badil, and its editor, Mohamed Kilani, were
sentenced in 1992 to two and a half years in prison for “spreading false
news”. Since February 27, 1998, Hamma Hammami has been on the run and
produces a clandestine newspaper, Saut Acha’ b.
Today, the surviving newspapers reflect the state of lethargy in which the
regime keeps the six legal parties. Through lack of resources and faced with
public indifference because of their timid editorial content, these
newspapers appear at random and their circulations are constantly falling.
As its parent party, the Progressive Socialist Assembly, has no seats in the
national assembly, Al-Maouqif does not receive the state subsidy handed out
to the press of Parliamentary parties (50 000 dinars a year – 40 800
dollars), nor revenue from advertising shared out by the ATCE, the Tunisian
External Communication Agency (see below). Al-Maouqif, which now appears
twice a year, prints no more than 3,000 copies. The RSP, living in continual
fear of being banned, never ventures to express sharp criticism, even though
Al-Maouquif is the only paper that still publishes statements from
associations that are independent of the regime. El-Shaab, the
Arabic-language weekly of the General Union of Tunisian Workers, has
financial problems, due in particular to falling advertising revenues and to
its less-than-independent editorial line. Its circulation has plunged from
135,000 copies in 1978 to 3,000 in 1999. On May 31, 1998, the managing
director and the editor of El-Shaab were summoned to the interior ministry
in connection with an article on rioting in Indonesia, in which the author
affirmed that economic development was not viable without democracy.
Censorship of telecommunications and the Internet
Other means of communication are also subject to meddling censorship. In May
1998, a Post Office Code was adopted, banning any mail that “threatens law
and order and national security”. Letters are thus frequently read and
confiscated. Telephone and fax lines are also tapped. Many journalists and
human rights defenders complain that their lines have been cut off by the
authorities. It is forbidden to import satellite phones, which cannot be
placed under police surveillance. Mobile telephones are managed by a state
company. Parabolic satellite TV aerials were legalized only in 1988. Since
then, satellite television audiences have grown constantly, and in 1994 the
government tried to curb this expansion by adopting a directive prohibiting
use of the dishes. But it finally had to give up, recognizing that such a
ban could not be enforced. In July 1995, Parliament passed a law making it
compulsory to obtain a municipal licence to install a parabolic aerial.
The authorities also sought to control the emergence of the Internet. In
1996, Internet access was finally authorised, but it remains narrowly
controlled by the State, with the creation of the Tunisian Internet Agency
(ATI) which, under the terms of decrees issued by the communication ministry
on March 22, 1997, supervises the two only companies providing access to the
world network. These two private companies, planet.tn and globalnet.tn, have
close links with the regime; one is run by President Ben Ali’s daughter and
the other by another family member.
In spite of assertions in the contract between the subscriber and the access
provider (“Planet Tunisia, which does not exert any control over the data
that may be consulted via the server centre, does not assume any
responsibility for the services accessible by Internet”), it has been
established that the server centers of the two providers do monitor the
movements of some netsurfers. For example, the sites they visit can be
listed and connection can be cut off without the user realising that it was
deliberate. Net users have even been visited in their homes by police
officers wanting to know why they connected to such and such an address.
Moreover, access to some sites whose addresses have been previously recorded
is permanently blocked.
In November 1998, Amnesty International published a report detailing the
regime’s serious human rights infringements. This report is available on the
organisation’s Website (www.amnesty.org). An Internet site whose address
(www.amnesty-tunisia) exploits confusion with the name of Amnesty, was then
set up to praise the country’s record and the action of President Ben Ali in
support of human rights. The creator of this complaisant site, Raghib El
Chammah, denies having taken up the cudgels for Tunis and any link with
president Ben Ali. On its own site, to which access is blocked in Tunisia,
Amnesty International denounces the imposture and refutes Mr El Chammah’s
assertions point by point. He is the head of a public relations and lobbying
firm with offices in Lebanon and France, one of whose biggest clients is the
Tunisian regime.
