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Tunis,Februry 18th. 2006
Upsurge of assaults on the freedom of the press.
OLPEC is alerting the
public about burgeoning acts of censorship that are striking the
Tunisian and foreign press in Tunisia. Following the
confiscation at news kiosks of three Tunisian periodicals at the
end of last month, the following assaults took place:
On February 7, the
authorities banned the circulation of number 257 of the magazine
"Al Maraa Al Youm", edited in Dubai. The cause for that
censorship seems to have been an article by the weekly's
editorialist, E. Mihoubi, in which he referred to the illness of
the Tunisian president Ben Ali.
The February 4 and 7
editions of the French daily "Le Monde" were also banned from
circulation in Tunisia. We point out that many newspapers (most
of them Algerian and Moroccan), the French daily "Libération",
the weekly "Le Canard enchaîné", and the London daily "Al Hayat"
have been prohibited from circulation for many years, whereas
"Al Quds Al Arabi" is regularly banned from circulation.
Last week, the political
police publicly summoned many human rights defenders, as well as
members of the editorial board of the newspaper "Kalima" and
confiscated copies of the newspaper in their possession after
having subjected them to a search.
We would like to point
out that the Department of the Interior continues to deny the
newspaper the right to publish, despite the completion of legal
formalities by the editorial team. On September 10, 2005, the "Kalima"
editorial team submitted the required formalities as required by
law (Sec. 13 of the press code) for the fourth time since 1999
in the presence of representatives of the IFEX-Tunisia
Monitoring Group − still without obtaining the acknowledgement
required by law to publish and print an official newspaper. The
"Kalima" team has been publishing the newspaper online since
2000; however, the site is blocked in Tunisia and Tunisian
readers have no access to the site. That is the reason why the
team decided to publish in print with its own resources and to
circulate the newspaper.
OLPEC is worried about
this escalation of censorship that is stifling the Tunisian and
foreign press at a time where the authorities had promised to
liberate the press in Tunisia.
- It takes note that
despite the repeal of the formal mechanism of the legal deposit
("dépôt légal") for Tunisian periodicals, which has just
recently been approved, the formality continues to be applied
against the foreign press and is transformed into a form of
preliminary censorship by the Department of the Interior each
time a newspaper criticises Tunisian politics or evokes taboo
subjects.
- It also states that the
repeal of that formality for Tunisian periodicals has not been
synonymous with freedom of expression and that, on the contrary,
censorship has come back even stronger. That serves as proof
that the obstacle has never been the "dépôt légal", which is a
normal formality concerning archival conservation, but rather
the intolerance of the authorities to a climate that embraces
freedom of the press.
- It calls for the repeal
of the legal requirement that new periodicals must be officially
acknowledged prior to publication, as well as the freedom of
dissemination for all audiovisual media.
Signed for OLPEC,
Mohamed Talbi, President
The Ministry of Culture's review board has announced the
censorship of playwright Jalila Baccar's new work,
"Corps-otages" ("Captive Bodies"), directed by Fadhel Jaibi.
After wavering for more than three months, the review board,
which is responsible for reviewing all theatrical releases in
the country, refused to issue the permit required for the play
to open. The board is demanding that Jaibi bring the play in
line with a list of 100 themes subject to censorship before it
grants the opening permit.
Board members took issue with the play's treatment of problems
confronting Tunisian society as it enters its 50th year of
independence (religious extremism, terrorism, intergenerational
conflicts, abusive security policies), and have demanded that
all dates, names of persons and places, as well as Coranic
excerpts and references to Tunisian history be removed.
Tunisians, it seems, will be denied the right to see a play
which has only recently returned from a highly successful run at
Paris's Odéon theatre, in June 2006.
In Tunisia, theatre is the only cultural form subjected to
preliminary censorship under the law. A public performance
permit (visa de représentation publique) must be obtained for
all productions. Permits are granted by the national review
board, a branch of the Ministry of Culture, which along with the
Ministries of the Interior and of Religious Affairs, is also
represented on the board.
It is interesting to note that, as the board enjoys a virtual
monopoly on theatrical distribution channels in the country, it
may exercise a form of indirect censorship via these
distribution channels, even when a permit has been granted.
OLPEC condemns the censorship and reminds the board that freedom
of expression is a basic right of all citizens in Tunisia,
guaranteed by the Constitution as well as by Article 19 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the In
The President
Mohamed Talbi
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