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November 20, 2005
Arbitrary Treatment
By the time we reached the final afternoon of WSIS, there was hardly a delegate in the Kram Palexpo who wasn't thoroughly exhausted. Some people had been working nonstop for almost an entire week; you could feel a strong desire in the air to go home, go relax or go to sleep. (If you're expecting me to post my final thoughts about WSIS now, you'll have to wait a while. For a variety of reasons, I think it's in my best interest for me to postpone my debriefing until I get home and can distance myself, shall we say, from the summit.)
There were lots of things going on at night - no doubt every delegation, if not every clique of delegates, planned to have a final get-together before departing Tunis. For me, my evening would be spent with friends I'd made in the Geneva phase of the summit. A group of us met at the ICT4ALL expo to assemble before heading to the Hotel Diplomat in Central Tunis, where we would rendezvous with other colleagues. I left the Palexpo one last time with Cyd Torquado of Brazil, Alex Felsenberg of Germany and several other colleagues; I also bumped into Phil Noble of PoliticsOnline, so the two of us sat together. The bus ride should have been relatively uneventful, but unfortunately it wasn't.
As Phil and I were talking, a Tunisian woman in a red uniform was arguing with Cyd, who was sitting directly in front of us. She was clearly irritated, and spoke in fast Arabic despite the fact that Cyd didn't speak the language. She then switched to English.
"I told you to open your bag."
"Why? Who are you?" Cyd asked.
"Just do it," she said.
"Are you carrying things?"
"What things?"
"Open your bag."
Cyd finally opened his bag and she gave it a quick look. Apparently she had been walking through the bus randomly searching people, which was quite strange since we were leaving the summit for the last time. What was she looking for? Pavilion set pieces? Translation headphones? I can understand searching us going into the Palexpo, but departing it? This hadn't happened all week.
A moment or two later she was standing in front of Phil and me. "Open your bag," she barked. "Are you carrying things?"
"What things? I asked.
"Things," she replied. "Bad things or good things?"
Another irritated delegate said behind us.
"Who are you?" Phil added. "May I see your identification?"
"No. Open your bag."
She was wearing a badge, but it was turned around backwards. Phil reached out to flip it and she smacked his hand.
"How do we know who you are?" Alex chimed in. "If you are going to search us, identify your self."
"What authority do you have?" Another person said. It was clear she was going to ignore anything we said. By now, it was my time to be verbally assaulted.
"Are you carrying things?" she demanded.
"Again, I ask you - what things would you like to see?" I said, increasingly irritated. She replied in Arabic. This was getting ridiculous.
"These aren't the droids you're looking for," I said, running out of ideas. "Move along." Clearly not getting the reference (I don't think anyone else did either), she simply grabbed my backpack's handle and unzipped the pocket closest to the straps. Inside there was almost nothing, except a couple pamphlets. Apparently these were not the droids she was looking for. Of course, there were three other pockets in my backpack jammed with all sorts of "things," including electronic gadgets and a fine range of human rights-related reports; perhaps these "things" would have been more interesting for her? Who is to say.
The woman had moved on to Alex Felsenberg. He was now arguing in a mix of French and English. "This is ridiculous," he sniped. "The summit is over. This is - what is the word - arbitrary. Completely arbitrary."
Once she left, the group of us continued to complain among ourselves. "Is this the way they say goodbye to delegates here?" "That was pointless, utterly pointless." "What gives her the right to search us without identifying herself?" Etc, etc. Once or twice some of the Tunisian delegates around us chimed in: "That was not right... She was probably exhausted, fatigue, you know- but that is no excuse.... She did it to us as well, but I do not know what she was searching for...."
Just as we were beginning to calm down, the bus stopped. A security official boarded the bus and went down the aisle, checking everyone's WSIS badge. This was getting ridiculous. But everyone was too drained to argue at this point.
Posted by acarvin at November 20, 2005 2:41 PM
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