U.N. Internet summit draws rights groups' fire

Hardly a model
The conflict between Annan's views and Tunisia’s record on free speech and Internet issues cannot be ignored, say Krikorian and other activists. Freedom House, an international rights advocacy group based in New York, classified Tunisia as one of the most restrictive countries in the Arab world in its 2004 annual report, “Freedom in the World.”

“The government controls domestic broadcasting, as well as the circulation of both domestic and foreign publications. In addition, the government uses newsprint subsidies and control over public advertising revenues as a means for indirect censorship,” the report says. “Since President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's ascent to power, Tunisian journalists who are critical of the regime have been harassed, threatened, imprisoned, physically attacked, and censored… Internet access is tightly controlled, and the government will at times intervene to block access to opposition Web sites.”

Says the 2005 report of Reporters Without Borders, a group that monitors press freedom around the world, “It is a cruel irony that Tunisia will host the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in November 2005.”

Krikorian was among a group of journalists who traveled to Tunisia in January to meet with government officials and lobby them for changes. They also met Tunisian human rights activists and journalists, many of whom are branded as “illegal” under Tunisian law. The trip won no promises of change, Krikorian says. “The officials we met all insisted Tunisia is completely free and claimed to know nothing about the blocking of websites.” The trip led the groups to launch a Tunisian Monitoring Committee under the aegis of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange to keep tabs on websites that are blocked and journalists who have been jailed or harassed because of their work. They also,  Krikorian says, want to keep the pressure on both the U.N. and Tunisia.

“When you speak of this to the [U.N.’s] ITU, which is responsible for that summit, for them it's not about content or censorship but about technical issues and tools,” says Krikorian. “But that is not what Kofi Annan has said, and we are planning a letter to him to see how he will respond. We hope he will see it the way we do, as a way to make some changes in Tunisia.”

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