Tunisia

New York, February 25, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Tunisian authorities to immediately release journalist Taoufik Ben Brik, who is serving a six-month jail sentence, so that he can receive the medical treatment he needs.

By Mohamed Abdel Dayem and Robert Mahoney

The media in the Middle East loved the Intifada. Every detail of Israel’s violations of human rights in the late 1980s in the West Bank and Gaza appeared in the Arabic and Farsi press. The governments that owned or controlled these media outlets loved it, too. When pan-Arab satellite television stations emerged in the 1990s, they looped hours of footage of Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers repressing Palestinians.

Top Developments
• Government engineers ouster of independent journalist union leaders.
• Two journalists are jailed in retaliation for critical reporting.

New York, February 1, 2010—A Tunisian appeals court on Saturday upheld a six-month prison sentence against journalist Taoufik Ben Brik, one of President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali’s toughest critics, according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists denounced the decision, the latest development in the politically motivated effort to silence Ben Brik.

“When people want to live, destiny must surely respond. Darknesss will disappear, chains will certainly break!”

Journalist Taoufik Ben Brik, 49, spurred admiration among his relatives and lawyers at a Tunis appeals court on Saturday when he chanted these two verses by Abou El Kacem Chebbi, Tunisia's most well-known poet. This unexpected recitation of Chebbi's verses, which galvanized resistance to French occupation and autocratic rule after the country's independence in 1956, followed the persecuted journalist’s first remarks in court about his ordeal since his incarceration on October 29. It was the first time he had been allowed to speak at his own hearing.

New York, January 20, 2010—An appeals court in the city of Nabeul refused today to release Tunisian Zuhair Makhlouf despite his completion of a three-month prison term imposed in October. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the court’s decision and demands authorities release Makhlouf immediately.

New York, January 15, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists urges the Tunisian judiciary to reverse on appeal the Wednesday decision of a Tunisian court in the southern town of Gafsa to sentence Fahem Boukadous, correspondent for the satellite television station Al-Hiwar Al-Tunisi, to a four-year prison term. 

New York, January 6, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists is greatly concerned by repeated death threats made against a critical Tunisian journalist living in France.