Freedom of Expression Criminalized in Tunisia
http://action.humanrightsfirst.org/campaign/Marzouki/explanation?qp_source=ga%5fadv
What’s At Stake?
Freedom of Expression Criminalized in Tunisia
Dr. Moncef Marzouki is one of Tunisia’s leading public health experts. He is also an internationally-celebrated human rights leader who has been honored around the world for his courageous, nonviolent advocacy of human rights. In Tunisia, he has been the target of an extraordinary sustained campaign of official harassment and intimidation, which has resulted in him being imprisoned twice, in 1994 and 2000, dismissed from his job as a professor of public health, and hounded into exile in 2001.
For years the human rights community in Tunisia has been under sustained pressure from the government. Since coming to power in a bloodless coup in 1987, President Zine El Abdine Ben Ali has failed to deliver on initial pledges to promote democracy and the rule of law. His rule has become increasingly authoritarian. No serious political opposition is permitted to form. The ruling party controls the parliament and the President himself routinely wins re-election by an excess of 90 percent of the vote in rigged elections. He was last re-elected, with a reported 95 percent of the vote, to a third five-year term, having amended the constitution in 2002 to enable him to serve beyond the permitted two terms. The judiciary is manipulated by the executive branch and independent judges have been removed from the bench. The press and broadcast media are tightly controlled, and the authorities make vigorous efforts to restrict internet communications and limit access to websites with independent news about Tunisia.
Human rights advocates have been a particular target of repression, with individual activists targeted for prosecution on fabricated charges and subject to threats and physical assault by state agents. Human rights organizations have also been restricted. Independent groups that are strongly critical of the government’s human rights practices, such as the National Committee for Liberties in Tunisia (CNLT) and the Tunisian Center for Judicial Independence (CTIJ), have been refused legal recognition and their activities are habitually obstructed and restricted by the authorities. Legally recognized groups, like the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH), are also subject to severe official pressure and interference in their activities.
Dr. Marzouki served as president of the Tunisian League for Human Rights from 1989 to 1994. After extensive official obstruction of the LTDH, Marzouki was one of the founders of the still unrecognized CNLT, an organization designed to speak freely on human rights issues in Tunisia without governmental constraint, serving as its principle spokesperson from 1998 to 2001.
In 1994, Dr. Marzouki was imprisoned for four months having declared himself as a candidate in the presidential election. After his release, Dr. Marzouki was subjected to constant police surveillance, his freedom to travel was frequently blocked,and his telephone and fax lines were cut. In 2000 he was charged and convicted of "spreading false information intended to disturb the public order," based on a paper about human rights violations in Tunisia that he released at a conference in Morocco. He was sentenced to one year imprisonment and was released, after serving nine months of his sentence, in September 2001.
Dr. Marzouki’s return from exile is a notable event and the government’s reaction, in launching a new criminal investigation and lodging a formal protest with the government of Qatar over the Al-Jazeera broadcast of his remarks, demonstrates the seriousness with which it has been taken by the authorities.
The Tunisian government’s criminalization of nonviolent advocacy of human rights is a violation of its obligations in international human rights law. Please call for the annulment of this new criminal investigation against Dr. Marzouki.
