Tunisia's Ben Ali Strengthens Dictator Grip

An aging tyrant grows more tyrannical.

Documenting abuses in Tunisia is something I do quite frequently. Why? Because it is one of the worst offenders and, yet, due to its relatively economic prosperity, secularism, strong pro-feminist laws and alliance with the United States and Europe it is often neglected in the condemnation of human rights abusers.

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And because Tunisia is a small nation it is much easier to stay below radar. But all this should not lead one to underestimate its repressive nature. Notwithstanding liberal policies on, say, women's rights and freedom of religion, Tunisia's Ben Ali regime is consistently ranked as one of the biggest enemies of a free press. Even though the nation is, again, a small country with just a little over 10million people it has imprisoned more journalists than any other Arab country since 2000. That includes Syrian (22million) and Saudi Arabia (30million), even though the former is for political and opportunistic reasons often singled about by hostile Western governments for being un-free.

The government is also quite slick in its repression. Keen to maintain the facade of liberalism and pluralism, the state has ceased with the blatant practice of blocking out whole websites and networks with YouTube and Facebook. Instead the secret police now will selectively censor this or that, say, critical article on the New York Times website without blocking the rest of the site and thereby plausibly claim that the regime has not done something so awful as to block the Times' website. This works with everything now. Twitter is legal, but if you Tweet against the state then your personal account will be blocked.

All this is by way of introduction to a new excellent Economist piece on the growing oppression in Tunisia:

Mr Ben Ali, nearly 74, often boasts of running a stable, modestly prosperous, well-educated country, with the Arab world’s most liberal legislation for women’s rights. But democracy is another matter. After his election to a fifth term in October, with 90% of the vote, his fist got tighter than usual. Amnesty International says that dissidents are held in dire conditions; those still free are constantly harassed. According to the human-rights body, security agents infiltrate opposition groups to take control of them, stifling open politics. Moreover, according to a book published last year in France but banned in Tunisia, Mr Ben Ali’s family and influential wife, Leila Trabelsi, own a number of lucrative monopolies that hamper the free market.The press is weak too. The state filters the internet, often confiscates editions of newspapers that dare publish dissident views, and jails independent journalists such as Fahem Boukadous, who was sentenced this month to four years in prison for reporting worker unrest in the mining region of Gafsa in 2008.

Source: The Economist.