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The international NGO Amnesty International has called on the Tunisian government to cease with his harassment of former political prisoners. The criticism is voiced in AI's new report "Freed but Not Free: Tunisia's Former Political Prisoners" which details the petty harassment that freed political prisoners face as they seek to resume normal lives. Case examples:
Sadok Chourou, who spent 18 years in prison before he was conditionally released in November 2008, was re-detained a month later after he gave media interviews talking about his experiences in prison and expressed views about the political situation in Tunisia. His conditional release was revoked so that he has to complete one remaining year of his original sentence and he was given an additional one year prison term. He is now due to be released in October 2010.
Many have also been banned from travelling outside Tunisia and are not permitted to move freely within the country.
Abdelkarim Harouni, who was placed under oppressive police surveillance following release from prison in November 2007, says it has had a very detrimental effect on his well-being and ability to interact with other people.
Abdellatif Bouhajila has been unable to obtain his medical files from the hospital where he was treated while in prison and his hospital appointments have been repeatedly cancelled leaving him without the medical treatment he urgently needs for heart and kidney ailments.
The Tunisian state is one of the worst violators of human rights in the region. Tunisian political prisoners are routinely tortured in the nation’s jails. .
The Ben Ali government has arrested more journalists in Tunisia since 2000 than any other Arab country! Arresting numerous journalists in itself is appalling [or just one, for that matter], but the fact that the Tunisian government has arrested more journalists in a nation of 10 million than Egypt (75 million) and Syria (19 million) speaks to the level of oppression in the nation. And trust me, Tunisia does not have more journalists than either country, they’re just imprisoned more. Further, critical journalists are a minority within the press corps. The Tunisian press is one of the most pathetic excuses for journalism around. The president’s face dons the front page almost on a daily basis. It is incredibly nurtured. Most publications are owned by people close to the regime or who receive payments from the Interior Ministry, or who fear that is their paper isn’t explicitly and passionately pro-regime they will be seen as suspect.
Sometimes journalists are beaten even before their arrest. A courageous feminist journalist in Tunisia was once beaten mercilessly in her own home. She took photographs of her face and her eyes when horrifically swollen and she suffered face stabbings as well. Her newspaper was banned and when she went online the authorities hacked in and erased her archives.
A Belgian [he might have been Swiss] was one stabbed by plain-clothed secret police in broad daylight all for doing a story on Tunisian activists on a hunger strike. The secret police thought the man was a national rather than a foreigner, they often ban foreign journalists but never intentionally attack them because they know what bad press they would receive overseas. Despite its image of moderation, Tunisia remains the most authoritarian and closely-state monitored nation bar Libya on the Mediterranean.
