More and more journalists are being harassed, prosecuted, and imprisoned. Freedom of the press is at an all-time low in Tunisia. Since July 25 and the promulgation of Decree-law 54, hostility towards journalists has been on the rise.

More and more journalists are being harassed, prosecuted, and imprisoned. Freedom of the press is at an all-time low in Tunisia. Since July 25 and the promulgation of Decree-law 54, hostility towards journalists has been on the rise.
Polemical public figures who provoke protests upon their arrival or an outpouring of public response to their ideologies and work are as telling of the values and issues precious to Tunisian public opinion as they are of the controversial figures themselves.
Defining the core of Nawaat’s collaborations with Privacy International, Sami Ben Gharbia points to the present legal battle that encompasses the Technical Telecommunications Agency mandated by decree and the (leaked) draft law concerning cybercrime, both of which must be addressed by «deconstructing the legal discourse of these threats and coming up with a proposal that will respect human rights.»
It is the transgression from the notion of censorship as a right and protection against physical and verbal violence that Tunisia’s legislative body must now recalibrate in order to advance in this period designated as democratic transition. That Tunisian law adheres to international standards is not merely insufficient, but ill-fitted, unconstructive, and myopic if compliance with international conventions translates into the copy-paste importation of text and a lack of contextualization and comparative analysis.
As much as instruments to monitor and ensure transparency and the constitutional operation of state powers and processes, the HAICA and the ISIE are, just several months into their roles, equally accountable for their own transparency and constitutional operation. The next six months will not only measure their competency and capacity to fulfill this dual responsability but will more generally decide the nature and successfulness of elections and the direction of the country through and beyond the transition period.
Two recent articles from The International Business Times (New York) and Index on Censorship (a London-based organization that works to «protect freedom of expression around the world») resonate with the skepticism in publications from Tunisian media outlets and pose questions pertinent to national controversies that embody the challenges of post-revolution social and political transition.
Lawyers, academics, politicians, civil society, more than one-hundred fifty organizations, Tunisians and internationals were part of the movement to FreeAzyz Amami and Sabri Ben Mlouka: democratic transition demands that the misuse of judicial power inherent in police state be replaced by the precedence of an independent justice.
That the Mesh Sayada case study has been presented in the context of US surveillance operatives is relevant to one discussion but is meanwhile a superficial and imprecise presentation of the project for citizens who participated in its development and to whom it belongs. The mesh network was not brought to Sayada; it was built in Sayada as a locally-devised, collaboratively-implemented initiative to promote Open Source and Open Data principles.
480 out of 873 union members voted in the elections, presumably due in part to the absence of those who were prevented from attending the event because they did not have the obligatory member cards. Neither the Nawaat nor other online sources dwell on what would appear to be a significant administrative error…
“What we have in our favor is that current politicians are not used to politics and can be pushed to accept the needs and rights of citizens. And there is no better judge to hold politicians accountable than the citizen. When we make information public, people know what is going on. Transparency must become obligatory.”
Two themes that prevail in blogs, reports, news articles, and interviews about art and artists in Tunisia are the gap between politics and people, especially youth, and the criminalization and marginalization of art and artists that has continued after the revolution.
What each country, each city, each community has to offer in this movement is an independently-crafted testament to one’s existence in the contemporary world during a period in history marked by widespread political instability, economic crisis, and desperation for change.
Voici les photos de la dernière édition du Forum WAN-IFRA de la presse Arabe, ayant eu lieu du 24 au 26 novembre 2013. Au-delà de l’objet même du Forum, c’est l’une de ces rares occasions durant lesquelles se réunissent quelques-uns parmi ceux qui ont à cœur le devenir de la profession ainsi que son indépendance. Derrière ce combat pour la liberté de la presse, il y a d’abord des femmes et des hommes, mais également des ONGs qui font un travail forçant le respect depuis des années…
On Wednesday October 9th, 2013, the 20- year old student Marwa Maalawi was sentenced to 3 months of jail on charge of addressing women’s minister Sihem Badi with derogatory word. On the 27th of March, 2013, student Marwa raised a sign in a protest in front of the ministry of women on which she wrote: “In the era of terrorist Ennahdha, a chaste woman is raped because her minister is a whore.”
20 September 2013 – We, the undersigned press freedom and freedom of expression organisations call on the authorities in Morocco to immediately release Ali Anouzla, editor of the Arabic edition of the news website Lakome, who was arrested on 17 September 2013, in connection with an article published on his website.
The Centre for Law and Democracy is today releasing a Note analysing the freedom of expression provisions in the new […]
Ayoub Massoudi, a former top media advisor to Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki, faces military trial over his televised declarations regarding the extradition of former Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmoudi from Tunisia to his country.
Tunisia has blocked the website of a Lebanese newspaper that published US cables released by WikiLeaks describing high-level corruption, a […]