FYI - Criticism of Tunisia Not Allowed At UN Meeting

[Meryem Marzouki <marzouki@ras.eu.org>]

Criticism of Tunisia Not Allowed At UN Meeting
http://allafrica.com/stories/200502240550.html

Highway Africa News Agency  (Grahamstown)

 February 24, 2005
Posted to the web February 24, 2005
Angella Nabwowe
  Geneva

The Secretariat of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 
will not allow civil society to distribute a report at the PrepCom 2 
meeting currently taking place in Geneva, Switzerland.

The sixty page report, compiled by the IFEX Tunisia Monitoring group, 
is critical of human rights abuses in Tunisia, the country designated 
to host the second phase of WSIS in November this year. The report 
details the imprisonment of individuals, the blocking of news and 
information websites, police surveillance of emails and internet cafes, 
lack of pluralism and media censorship.

IFEX is an international consortium of media organisations that 
campaign for the freedom of expression and against human rights abuses.

During a media caucus meeting this evening, Steve Buckley, world 
president of the World Association of Community Broadcasters (AMARC) 
informed stakeholders that the WSIS secretariat had banned them from 
distributing the document in any meetings or rooms except the one 
assigned for the civil society plenary.

"They want us to sign a statement saying that we shall not distribute 
the report in any of the desginated conference venues except civil 
society. They maintain IFEX is not accredited, but IFEX is not an 
organisation -- it is a consortium of organisations accredited by the 
WSIS" Buckley reported.

Buckley views the banning as double standards because the response from 
the Tunisian pro-government delegation criticising the IFEX report is 
being circulated as an official document at the conference.

"This is a delaying move. If we don't get a response from the 
secretariat by tomorrow, we shall be left with no choice but to give 
the WSIS secretariat a deadline to have the report distributed because 
it was submitted to them with a covering letter with the five 
organisations that compiled the report and are accredited by WSIS".

He says that delaying the distribution of the report is typical of the 
Tunisian censorship techniques.

According to Article 13 of the Tunisian press code, a declaration must 
be lodged with the ministry of the interior before the publication of 
any periodical. In exchange, the ministry must hand out a "récépissé" 
(receipt). The declaration must include: The title of the periodical, 
the details of the publisher, the details of the printer, the 
language(s) in which it is drafted. By virtue of Article 14, before the 
printing of any periodical, the printer requires the receipt delivered 
by the ministry of the interior. In practice the receipt is almost 
never issued, thus preventing the creation of a certain number of 
periodicals in Tunisia.

Mark Bench, executive director WPFC refers to the situation as 
government censorship made possible by the United Nations. "I 
understand there was a rule at UN that if a government wishes to block 
any communication of an NGO, they may do so because who are we? 
However, coming from a country where one can say whatever they want, 
because this is guaranteed in the constitution, we find that this is 
government censorship here at the UN. We are accredited, why can we not 
say what we want to?"

Luckson Chipare, regional director of the Media Institute of Southern 
Africa (MISA) who presented the IFEX report to the conference on 
yesterday, says "We are registered to be here, when we were printing 
the report they didn't inform us of a second decision of whether or not 
to have the report circulated."