(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, RSF expresses its outrage about the “silence of the Tunisian authorities concerning the journalist Taoufik Ben Brick, who is in his twenty-first day of a hunger strike”. RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard urges the president “to return the passport of journalist Taoufik Ben Brick, […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, RSF expresses its outrage about the “silence of the Tunisian authorities concerning the journalist Taoufik Ben Brick, who is in his twenty-first day of a hunger strike”. RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard urges the president “to return the passport of journalist Taoufik Ben Brick, whose life is now in danger.”
According to the information obtained by RSF, the doctors who examined the journalist on the morning of 23 April 2000 declared that in addition to losing eighteen kilograms, “Taoufik Ben Brick suffers from severe undernutrition.” They noted “the appearance of signs of visceral lesions that could seriously jeopardise his life.” The medical team thus decided to “hospitalise him in a specialized environment, at the latest by the morning of Monday 24 April.” “This hospitalisation is not negotiable,” they added.
A correspondent with RSF, the French daily “La Croix” and the Infosud and Syfia news agencies, Ben Brick hopes through this hunger strike to obtain the return of his passport, which he has been deprived of since April 1999. The journalist is also protesting the constant harrasment of which he is the object. Anonymous telephone threats, the cutting of his telephone and fax lines, police surveillance of his home, physical attacks, pressure on his family: this has been the daily lot of the journalist for two years now.
Facing the stubborness of the Tunisian authorities and at a time when protests are multiplying, RSF has launched a petition in support of the journalist. Signatories of this text urge the Tunisian authorities to “return Taoufik Ben Brick’s passport to him so that he can travel and work freely”. The petition can be signed on RSF’s website at www.rsf.fr.
