Dear colleagues,
I am of the view that this is one of those scenarios that was blown
out of proportion by the secretariat and the Tunisian government which
should have just been allowed on the table and it would have quietly
been received by various governments. Instead they have made an
incident of it and they must live with the consequences.
Nevertheless, it is concommitant on us to try and understand by what
rules we are to abide by in the process. As I understand it, under UN
rules there may be a restriction on documents that single out a single
government for criticism. IF this is the case, then we need to know
if it is acceptable to submit documents that criticize 5 governments,
or 150 governments, etc.
As a matter of fairness and balance, it would be good if our documents
began with the proviso that many governments have poor records on
human rights in the information society, and highlight several of
them, with some attention to regional balance and several aggregious
cases. It is my understanding that many of our African colleagues in
civil society have problems with the singling out of one African
country, which need to be taken into account, particularly if a
majority of members of the caucus come from Western countries.
Regards,
Rik Panganiban
On Feb 25, 2005, at 4:51 AM, Meryem Marzouki wrote:
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."
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