Human Rights on Vacation

Mention Tunisia and perhaps images of windsurfing the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean or taking camel rides through the dusty ruins of Carthage come to mind.

Yet Tunisia is an authoritarian police state in which basic civil rights such as freedom of expression and freedom of association are brutally repressed.

"We are not citizens; we do not have any fundamental rights," says journalist Sihem Bensedrine. "The police can stop you (walking down the road) and tell you to take another route. If you want to travel, they can take your passport. If you want to talk to a friend on the phone … the number doesn't work. You send mail, and that mail never arrives," she says.

Ms. Bensedrine runs the banned Tunisian news Web site Kalima and suffers police harassment on a daily basis for her political views. Since returning from self-imposed exile in Germany earlier this year, she says a team of plain-clothes police have run a campaign of psychological intimidation against her by barring entry to Kalima offices, confiscating equipment, and harassing workers. In one particularly humiliating episode, police refused to let cleaning services enter her apartment after Ms. Bensedrine found human excrement smeared around the bathroom.

Efforts to strengthen civil society in Tunisia face a host of problems ranging from intimidation of the local population to the indifference of foreign governments eager to win allies in the global war on terror. "The Tunisian government gets away with an amazing amount of image-glossing. I know of no other case where the disjuncture between image and the reality on the ground is so enormous," says Joe Stork, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa Program at Human Rights Watch.

Add to this the picture postcard image of Tunisia being promoted in tourist brochures and travel agents abroad, and it is not hard to understand why few in the West are able to perceive trouble in paradise.

Ms. Bensedrine first became involved in freedom of expression issues when she started out as a journalist in the 1980s. The current authoritarian president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, assumed power in 1977 and was beginning a slow process of rolling back human rights and civil liberties. Ms. Bensedrine says that once she realized what was happening to her country, she had a moral obligation to expose the truth to the public. "From the moment you become a witness, you have a responsibility to tell what you have seen – from this moment, you cannot return," she says.

The task is challenging, to say the least. Tunisian authorities routinely vet and censor both local newspapers and those coming from outside the country. The nation also holds the dubious record of imprisoning a journalist for the longest period of time of any Arab nation;  Hamadi Jebali, editor of the weekly El Fajr, was released in February 2007 after serving 15 years, during which a series of hunger strikes seriously affected his health.

Like other journalists, Ms. Bensedrine also has suffered for trying to do her job – she has been beaten and imprisoned for speaking out about such issues as corruption and torture. Despite the danger, she feels she can achieve more being based in Tunisia than abroad. "It is my country. It is my place of battle. My objective is that one day Tunisian citizens will be free in their country to enjoy their citizenship."

But some 25 years after she first started out, the situation surrounding many civil liberties in Tunisia has gone from bad to worse. It appears that much of Ms. Bensedrine's fight has been in vain.

"Never have we lived in such a bad situation as that in which we live now. We have total confiscation of freedom of speech in Tunisia," she says.

With governments in the West praising Tunisia as a model Arab nation in the fight against terror, the prospect for improving the situation anytime soon appears bleak. The Ben Ali regime has cracked down on Islamic groups such as Hizb al-Nahda and secular critics of the regime alike since a bout of political unrest began in late 2006.

In what was widely seen as a veiled warning to human rights groups in Tunisia, Mr. Ben Ali warned in a speech in April that nongovernmental organizations ought not to abuse their independence or damage Tunisia's interests.

Despite these repressive practices, a delegation from the U.S. Congress led by John Tanner in June talked about the prospects for strengthening pluralism and freedom of expression in Tunisia, while simultaneously stating that local security services were doing a "good job."

Ms. Bensedrine is frustrated by such assessments and calls unconditional foreign government support for Ben Ali a disservice to her cause.

"We have no support from the Western world – they believe that given Tunisia is a stable country, and that there is appropriate economic growth, it is not worth the trouble to liberate us, and in a systematic manner, they have supported our dictatorship," she says. "This is the tragedy of Tunisia."

The only hope is if citizens of the West somehow wake up to what is occurring in Tunisia and take action themselves, she says. "It is the civil society of Europe and America who are our real supporters and our real partners in this fight. I am waiting for them to put pressure on their own governments, so that these governments stop supporting the dictatorship."

Indeed, the Ben Ali government's increasingly close political links with the West risk alienating some groups in the local population such as the young, among whom anti-United States sentiment is growing. It is reported that several hundred Tunisians have gone to fight Western forces in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last few years.

For those who may have visited Tunisia, the prevalence of politically aware locals wearing jeans and fashionable clothing can be misleading. "The walls have ears – you can be taken to prison to explain your opinions in private," says Ms. Bensedrine.

Tunisia has a relatively highly educated population that might be expected to demand a greater degree of political freedom from its rulers. "But the government is very adept at thwarting civil society through methods ranging from simple thuggery to use of a non-independent judiciary to intimidate people," says Mr. Stork.

Being well-educated or middle class is no protection. "Even the heads of businesses and economic actors are not free to do what they want," says Ms. Bensedrine. "If you do not obey the will of those in power, you can be taken to prison or have your wealth taken or destroyed."

While Ms. Bensedrine says she is a secular activist more inspired by human dignity than faith in her efforts to protect civil rights, the teachings of the Qur'an that promote basic freedoms add further justification to her cause. "There is no disputation of freedom of speech in Islam. On the contrary, there is a verse that states very clearly that men are born free and should remain free," she says.

She says politicians the world over have twisted faith for their own purposes and attempted to use religion as a justification to erode freedom of speech and other key human rights. "Those who make religion an instrument for their own political purposes want to cover up its sacredness," she says.

Updated August 2007