Dictatorship: Tunisia's Undeserved Fate

At a press conference on May 4, Naji Bghouri, the head of the National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT), was prevented by pro-government journalists from finishing comments in which he mentioned of declining press freedoms in Tunisia. The episode showed that the regime of President Zine al-Abedine ben Ali had lost patience even with a body that it had helped establish in January 2008 to cut the grass out from under the feet of the country's most critical journalists.

Bghouri and his independent-minded young colleagues' crime was to distance themselves from ben Ali's aides by issuing a report on press freedoms, which, though critical, was far less so than the reports issued over the past few years by international press freedom groups. The International Federation of Journalists applauded the efforts of the SNJT to improve the conditions of journalists and denounced "political intolerance and ruthless hostility to defenders of press freedom and human rights." At the same time, however, the Tunisian Communications Ministry launched a campaign to evict the democratically elected SNJT board and replace it with a more pliable one.

The Tunisian regime used the same scenario when the Association of Tunisian Magistrates firmly opposed government interference in its internal affairs and raised its voice to defend the independence of the judiciary. A pro-government board was nevertheless imposed on the magistrates in 2005, and members of the previous independent board have, since, seen their freedom of movement tightly restricted, even as they have been harassed in the streets and the courts.

The Tunisian League for Human Rights, the first of its kind in the Arab world, has suffered the same fate. It has been under considerable police pressure and has been crippled for resisting infiltration by pro-government members. The Tunisian government frequently evokes the specter of foreign interference as justification to silence a wide variety of potentially independent voices, be they human rights activists, opposition politicians, or independent journalists.