Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights

The Role of the International Community

The venerable and independent Tunisian Human Rights League functioned at a minimal level, sapped by years of harassment and restrictions that succeeded in frightening, discouraging, and demobilizing much of its membership. The league’s offices were under intimidating police surveillance.League activities and statements were systematically ignored by all Tunisian media. In an unprecedented measure, the state prosecutor summoned league President Taoufik Bouderbala for questioning on February 19 concerning a league communiqué.

The interior ministry broke off a working dialogue it had established in 1997 with the league. On several occasions, the league reminded the government, to no avail, of its promise to allow the league to visit prisons. While the staunchly pro-government Higher Committee on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms could visit prisons unannounced, no independent organization had access.

Khemaïs Ksila, a vice-president of the Tunisian Human Rights League, spent the year behind bars for having condemned repression in a communiqué issued in his own name in September 1997. On February 11, a court gave him a three-year sentence for “defamation of the public order,” “spreading false information of a nature to disturb public order,” and “inciting citizens to violate the law.” Observers at his trial representing international human rights organizations criticized the relevant articles of the penal and press code as incompatible with the right to free expression, as well as the court’s requiring defendant Ksila to prove that his statement was not defamatory, thereby disregarding the principle of presumption of innocence.

In a meeting with Human Rights Watch on August 26, Presidential Advisor on Human Rights Rafik Haj Kassem denied allegations about surveillance and harassment of the league. He attributed the league’s difficulties to internal political divisions and noted that it was but one among 6,000 associations in Tunisia.

Of these many associations, only the league, the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (ATFD), and the section of Amnesty International (AI) focused on human rights in a demonstrably independent fashion, and all three experienced government restrictions and pressures.

While by many indicators women’s status in Tunisia was high by regional standards, the ATFD deplored the lack of political freedom its members enjoyed to promote women’s rights. The media ignored the ATFD, except for scurrilous attacks on its members, including one in the government-influenced al-Hadath of March 11 hinting that the organization promoted lesbian sex. Authorities blocked efforts by the ATFD to organize a march in support of women in Algeria.

The government has often boasted that Tunisia hosts a section of AI. Yet even though the section is barred by its mandate from doing work on Tunisia, the government created obstacles whenever the section attempted to organize a gathering outside its small office. The police opened the section’s mail and advised some individuals to quit the group, according to its president. Internet users reported that AI’s site on the World Wide Web appeared to be systematically blocked by the authorities.

Radhia Nasraoui, the country’s most outspoken human rights lawyer, was subjected to a wide array of measures. On the night of February 11, unidentified intruders ransacked her office, stealing equipment and scores of case files. It was the third such break-in at her office since 1994. On March 30, after defending a group of students arrested on charges of belonging to an unlicensed leftwing organization and denouncing their torture in detention, Nasraoui was charged with eleven offenses, including maintaining links with a “terrorist organization.” The spurious charges forced Nasraoui, as an alleged co-conspirator, to withdraw as counsel, thereby preventing her from conveying directly their accounts of ill-treatment. A judge also ordered her to remain in greater Tunis pending her trial, keeping her from representing clients elsewhere in the country and from traveling abroad. From late March until June, Nasraoui and her two young daughters were the target of intensive surveillance and sometimes menacing behavior by plainclothes policemen. The same month, however, Tunisian lawyers gave Nasraoui more votes than any other candidate in the national bar association’s board elections.

For several weeks between late March and June, at least fifteen human rights activists and lawyers were subjected to a campaign of incessant and obtrusive surveillance by plainclothesmen. The monitoring lasted longer for two active lawyers, Anouar Kousri in Bizerte and Najet Yacoubi in Tunis. While local groups and activists said that during 1998 there was no easing overall in the government pressures they faced, Human Rights Watch conducted a mission under conditions more favorable than in the past. There was no noticeable surveillance of the organization’s researcher as he moved about the country. He was hospitably received both by the minister of interior and the president’s advisor on human rights. Tunisian authorities also permitted other international organizations to send observers to the trial of Khemaïs Ksila.