Opposition Newspaper Censored In Tunisia and Sick Journalist Jailed

The Tunisia you don't see in those glossy brochures.

The Ben Ali regime is growing more desperate in its repression. Regimes tend to clamp down more harshly when they feel vulnerable and they feel vulnerable when the head of the regime is ailing. This is when the regime feels the need to flex more muscle than usual so as to discourage any potential rebellion which make seek to exploit and capitalize on the sudden death of the president in order to bring about change in the order. So the regime lets the public know it is not timid in using force and preemptively shuts down those institutions and locks up those voices most likely to rally dissent during any absence of "leadership".

ben ali tunisie 2009 5yaYO 19672

And that may be the case of Tunisia today. Do not misunderstand: Tunisia is a thuggish regime year round and for decades. So much so that the regime censors, arrests and harasses even the most marginal and inconsequential dissidence just to prevent even the miminal air of criticism from ever being heard even by a handful of Tunisians. This regime consistently ranks as one of the most censoring ones in the world.

But the regime is growing more brutish. It is well-known that President Ben Ali, in his seventies, is greatly ill and several self-appointed potential successors have being positioning themselves to replace him. Ben Ali and especially his wife and her family (the Trabelsis) are so widely detested for their repression and their looting of the nation (especially the latter Trabelsi clan) that his death may lead to some eruptions of resistance and calls for democratization. This would conflict with the Trabelsi clan's ambition to directly take power and seize it more forcefully and further their subjugation of the nation for their own economic interests. So these hoping successors may be directing the escalating repression in order to subdue and intimidate the masses in order to ensure their resignation to a new repressive order, and one that may be headed by a Trabelsi, and the acquiescence to it instead of strongly resisting. They're certainly not being timid in their vulgar oppression:

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the apparent censorship of Al-Mawkif, an opposition weekly belonging to the Progressive Democratic Party in Tunisia. Rachid Khechana, left, Al-Mawkif editor-in-chief, told CPJ that 10,000 copies of the newspaper’s Friday edition disappeared from newsstands, apparently confiscated by security agents.

An appeals court in Tunisia has upheld a prison sentence for a journalist who had covered violent protests in the Gafsa mining region in 2008.

Fahem Boukadous had been handed a four-year jail term for reporting information deemed to threaten public order and for belonging to a criminal association.

His lawyer says Boukadous is currently in hospital with breathing problems.

Three Tunisian journalists have been jailed in the past year.

Media freedom lobby group the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the court's decision, saying Boukadous was being punished for "reporting the news".

The CPJ said Boukadous, who worked for a satellite TV channel, was being prosecuted for reporting the 2008 protests over unemployment, high cost of living and corruption.

His lawyer Mohamed Abbou said he feared Boukadous could be arrested in hospital "at any moment".

He has said he fears a "transfer to prison would mean my death", reports the AFP news agency.