Et voilà qu’El Hiwar Ettounsi Tv récidive. Après le numéro de « Liman Yajroô faqat » du 22 février (lire notre article), l’émission de divertissement « Labes » a invité, dans la soirée de samedi dernier, Seif Trabelsi. Ce n’est plus en tant que neveu de Leila Ben Ali et frère d’Imed Trabelsi qu’il est convié. Il est plutôt présenté par l’animateur comme « artiste ». Le rebranding se poursuit. Leurres, copinage et arrangements.
With war waged against terrorism, questions of ethics and deontology have faded into the background. In the meantime, media treatment of the Bardo Attack is a textbook case of politicization that allows us to measure the ambiguity of relations between media and power. The trigger effect of security discourse has mobilized judiciary and police organs born and bred under a dictatorship that was immune to the threat of terrorism. To what extent can regulations contain this return to normalization?
Peak season of olive oil production having recently come to an end, the month of April has seen a host of competitions in cities across the globe to discern this year’s highest quality olive oils and acknowledge outstanding producers. On 16 April, the third annual Awards Ceremony for The Best Packaged Tunisian Olive Oil took place at the Hotel Ramada Plaza in Gammarth. Some two hundred business-owners, foreign diplomats, ministers, and press were present to honor the winning producers—Al Jazira, Ulysse Agro Industries, and El Baraka respectively—of twenty-two competing companies.
On April 16, Ben Guerdane was the scene of demonstrations following the murder of Mokhtar Zaghdoud by an agent of the National Guard in the isolated zone between the Tunisian-Libyan borders. Protestors expressed their anger in response to a number of similar incidents; since December 2012, twenty-five inhabitants from the region have been killed in such circumstances. Two of these deaths occurred in April.
The agitation that a democratic model allows represents a prompt for open, substantial discussion, create space for questions to form and answers to be formulated, for awareness to shift and public opinion to fluctuate and controversy to take its course … For over a decade, Nawaat has been a platform many of whose contributors are quick to question, criticize, and call out the Tunisian and foreign governments for hypocrisy, complicity, exploit, corruption…the very symptoms of defective governance that were renounced by youth and activists and journalists of the so-called Arab Spring, the same individuals whom Western democracies and international agencies have so effusively commended for their courage and commitment to changing the status quo. And so inevitably it feels like something of a betrayal when requests for more specific information and questions regarding political motives are consistently held at bay, excluded from discussions, or, most conveniently, ignored.
Amidst the distilled information and tones of alarmism and pessimism that stifle quality discussions on terrorism in mainstream media, one finds the insight and information provided by members of civil society, activists, government officials active on social media platforms. Such a plurality of perspectives is important for fleshing out and expanding a discussion that is commonly portrayed as a two-sided debate between human rights advocates who demand the protection of civil liberties at the expense of effective security measures, and conservative political figures whose rhetoric of national security and unity in the face of terrorism is construed to harbor power and by extension repress fundamental rights.
The 2015 World Social Forum opened its doors for the second consecutive year in Tunisia. Since 2001, this open space represents an alternative to the World Economic Forum at Davos and declares its anti-globalization approach in the fight against capitalism and neoliberalism. At each session, participants and visitors express their ideas and experiences to make their voices heard and learn how to improve their capacity for self-governance.
Given mainstream Western media’s portfolio of news reports on Tunisia since 2011 and also in light of the country’s constitutional guarantee for a pluralistic and fair media, it is regrettable as seems to be the case in the days and weeks that have followed the attack that foreign press should be granted more access to events of public interest in the capital than many local, independent media outlets.
At the beginning of March, another modification was issued via Committee Implementing Regulation 2015/380 to suspend the issuing of importation certificates and to respond to requests for olive oil with an allocation coefficient of 5,451531%. In order to understand how these regulations reflect and effect the production and export of Tunisian olive oil, Nawaat visited the Tunisian Board of Olive Oil (ONH) in Tunis.
Right after the news of the terrorist attack on the Bardo museum in Tunis, last Wednesday, some Tunisians (mainly on Facebook and Twitter) had the most disgusting reaction I have ever witnessed. Statuses like “Poor Tunisia! No tourism this year!”, “We’re doomed, nobody is coming this summer” invaded my feed and the first few were more than enough to make my blood boil (which wasn’t difficult in the first place, since I was already enraged by the news).
After two strange and stunned-to-silence days in the capital, Friday morning on Avenue Habib Bourguiba bore much the same eager, pent-up energy as the first sunny day following weeks of grey and rain. It was only Wednesday that twenty tourists and three Tunisians (one policeman and the two assassins) were killed and forty-seven wounded at the Bardo Museum, while close by the Parliamentary Rights and Liberties Commission discussed the new antiterrorism law.
These pictures do not comply with most Western media esthetical editorial codes, so I did not see them reappear on television or in news papers…nevertheless they had struck my eye … these poorly dressed men with their worn out guns and the reversed rain of bullets that had smashed them down… the one with the red cloak jacket was covered with sandy debris that had spat from the impacted walls in a corner where he had been driven in…
Since the departure of Ben Ali which symbolized the end of a decades-long case of “state capture,” the push to flesh out US-Tunisia trade relations has manifested in State-driven initiatives to stimulate foreign investment and in calls to adopt a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Among the forces pushing for the facilitation of foreign investment, the American Chamber of Commerce in Tunisia is lobbying for national regulatory reforms—specifically the Investment Code and laws governing intellectual rights—as well as a new bilateral trade agreement.
In Tunisia’s case, there will likely be for many years to come the relentless push, from both without and within, for foreign governments and institutions to supply aid, support, assistance, and know-how to the end/under the pretext of promoting economic growth, social justice, and State accountability. In this context, will Tunisia allow outside interests and impositions to define its foreign relations and, by extension, its own autonomy? or will it remain vigilant, deliberate, and selective in decisions concerning relations with its geographical neighbors, economic ‘partners,’ and strategic ‘friends’?
Articles and reports in foreign media on Tunisian olive oil have been manifold since the beginning of the year, prompted by an EU regulation to accommodate Tunisia’s “excellent season” and US interest in promoting and facilitating the export of Tunisian olive oil to the States. The following is an overview of Tunisia’s olive oil industry and affiliated ministries, institutions, and foreign markets who influence the production and export of Tunisia’s historically symbolic and gastronomically essential commodity, ingredient, source of wealth.
They come from countries as different as France, Sweden and Lebanon, they manage a company for natural cosmetics or work as a photographer, they are 25 or 71. It’s obvious: There is no such thing as the typical expat experience in the city of Tunis. Five people tell their very personal stories.
Earlier this month, Nawaat visited one of four regions in Tunisia where the French Compagnie Générale des Salines de Tunisie, or COTUSAL, extracts and produces salt for the local market and for export. The ensuing report, which elicited a prompt response from the company, is the most recent in a series of articles from the past year that explore the legal, economic, and environmental implications of the company’s operations in Tunisia.
Tunisia’s reformists have been given fresh hope after the country’s Justice Minister announced plans to reform the state’s controversial drug laws. Earlier this week Justice Minister Mohamed Saleh Bin Issa told journalists that the ministry would seek to revise the law 52 and approve the adoption of alternative sanctions.
