« Helping Latinos Bridge the Digital Divide Through Sensible Policymaking | Main | Impromptu Celebration »
January 9, 2006
In Tunisia, The Sound of Enforced Silence
Ever since the end of the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, most of the mainstream media has turned its attention away from Tunisia's shabby human rights record. WSIS, for a brief time, put an intense spotlight on the way the Tunisian government curtails free speech and suppresses political dissent. But the news coverage ended abruptly after WSIS delegates packed their bags and returned home.
Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper has picked up where other news outlets have left off, publishing a strong critique by Tunisian political activist Neila Charchour Hachicha. Some highlights from her essay:
In Tunisia, the price for speaking one's mind is harsh. The late blogger Zouhair Yahyaoui spent a year and a half in prison for his Web commentary. The government sentenced teenagers in the southern port city of Zarzis to 19 years' in prison for having clicked on Web sites of terrorist groups. The teenagers did nothing that analysts, journalists or curious persons do not do several times a month in any democratic state.The Tunisian government regularly blocks access to my own party's Web site and that of other liberal and secular opposition groups. The government has even blocked the sites of legally recognized opposition parties. Ben Ali tells Washington and Brussels that he alone stands in the way of fundamentalist groups, and he adds that Tunisia is a genuine democratic republic evolving at its own standards of evolution. Indeed each country has its specific context and needs its own standards of evolution; but freedom of speech is and will always be the minimal credible standard for any newborn democracy. Unless this freedom is guaranteed, a regime cannot pretend that it is evolving toward democracy....
It is humiliating to be denied freedom of expression in one's own country. It was embarrassing that it needed the public intervention of the Swiss president to defend our cause and help Ben Ali remember that he must respect Tunisia's national and international commitments as a member of the UN. Democracy cannot be a favor offered by a regime under international pressure. Liberty is a state of mind that each one of us, from the grass roots to the pinnacle of power, must practice every day through tolerance and within the framework of an independent legal system.
Instead of sending its experts after a crime is committed, the UN would be better off considering preventive sanctions for those countries whose regimes do not respect the fundamental rights of its citizens.
If you've never read the Daily Star, I highly recommend it, particularly for its opinions and editorials. They're publishing some of the best English-language commentary on the evolving Middle East. -andy
Posted by acarvin at January 9, 2006 11:31 AM
Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article
