Dear Mr. Secretary:

Your planned trip on December 2 and 3 to North Africa will be your first to the region since President Bush delivered a major address November 6 on the need to promote democracy and human rights in the Middle East.

The heads of state and senior officials you will see in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia no doubt view your visit as an early indication of how the United States intends to further the principles espoused in the president's speech. It is therefore critical that you address in a frank way the human rights problems particular to each of these three countries and articulate concrete improvements that can be made. As the campaign against terrorism is also a focus of your trip, we urge you to state publicly in each of these countries that the fight against terror must not be waged at the expense of human rights.

In Algeria, political violence has declined, but the legacy of the worst years of strife is heavy. Thousands of Algerians were "disappeared" by state agents and remain missing to this day. In September President Bouteflika established a new commission to handle cases of enforced disappearance, an issue we understand the U.S. has followed closely. We urge you to tell your hosts that if this body is to help Algerians turn the page on this brutal phase of its history, it needs powers far greater than those it was given to probe cases and to obtain the specific and credible answers that have been denied for years to families of the missing.

Algeria enjoys a measure of political and journalistic pluralism. However, journalists who displease the authorities occasionally face prosecution. We urge you to raise the case of Hassan Bourras, a reporter based in al-Bayadh for the western regional daily al-Djazaïr. Earlier this month a court handed him a two-year prison sentence for libel and a five-year ban on practice of his profession, in connection with his articles on official corruption. Bourras reportedly plans to appeal this sentence, the harshest so far under a tough 2001 libel law.

In Morocco, a crackdown under new anti-terror legislation that intensified after the May 17 attacks in Casablanca is eroding the substantial advances made on human rights over the last decade. Years after the practice of "disappearances" was halted and the incidence of torture dropped, there are again reports of suspicious deaths in detention and persons who remain unaccounted for months after their arrest. We urge you to encourage Moroccan authorities to pursue the detention, investigation, and trials of suspected militants in a way that preserves the progress that made it one of the countries in the region most respectful of human rights.

It is critical also that Moroccan authorities reaffirm their commitment to press freedom. One step they should take is to release imprisoned journalists, notably Ali Mrabet, editor of Demain and Douman, independent weeklies in French and Arabic that were closed down by court order. Mrabet is serving three years in prison after being convicted in May of "insulting the king," "undermining the monarchy, and "endangering the integrity of national territory" for articles, interviews and cartoons he published.

Tunisia's government and its people take pride in the country's economic performance, its low levels of poverty and illiteracy, and the code of personal status granting women near-equal rights with men. These achievements, many Tunisians argue, make it one of the most viable candidates for democracy in the Arab world.

But President Ben Ali has taken the country in another direction altogether. He tolerates virtually no dissent, secular or Islamist, from the media, political parties, and human rights defenders. Secular-leaning dissidents and human rights defenders are at risk of physical assaults by plainclothes police, monitoring of communication, denial of the right to travel, and occasionally, imprisonment on trumped-up charges.

The harshest treatment is reserved for suspected Islamists. Hundreds are currently serving long prison terms after unfair trials for nonviolent offenses such as mere membership in an organization the government has declared "illegal." Several leaders are kept in strict isolation and are refused writing instruments and other amenities. Prisoners are constantly moved from one prison to another, imposing a hardship on their relatives who wish to visit them.

We urge you to encourage Tunisian authorities to improve prison conditions for political prisoners, which are punitively harsh and well below what is called for by the U.N.'s Standard Minimal Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.

We also hope you will press Tunisian authorities to end the repression of their domestic critics. They should halt the police harassment of human rights lawyers such as Radhia Nasraoui, who is now on a prolonged hunger strike over the constant surveillance and intimidation faced by her family, her clients, and herself. And Abdullah Zouari, a journalist who served eleven years in prison after an unfair trial, should be freed from the current nine-month sentence he is serving after a politically motivated prosecution on charges of violating an administrative order.

On August 8, 2002 you wrote to Human Rights Watch to inform us that U.S. officials had just raised with Tunisia's human rights minister the case of imprisoned dissident Hamma Hammami. His early release one month later was perceived widely as due in part to the high-level interest that the U.S. had shown in the case.

Your forthcoming trip to North Africa is a key opportunity to exert this kind of positive influence again. Not only would you be promoting positive change in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, but demonstrating to governments and peoples across the Middle East that the Bush administration will act concretely in pursuit of the goals articulated in the president's speech.

We thank you for your consideration.

Kenneth Roth
Executive Director

Tom Malinowski
Washington Advocacy Director