Your Excellency: We are writing to you as president of a country that is an elected member of the newly established United Nations Human Rights Council, to urge you to uphold the right to press freedom in Tunisia. The Council, which will meet later this month for the first time, is the main U.N. body tasked with promoting human rights. As an elected member Tunisia is required to “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights,” according to the U.N. General Assembly resolution that established the Council.
New York, March 31, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply disturbed by the mistreatment and harassment of imprisoned Tunisian writer and human rights lawyer Muhamed Abbou. Abbou was so weak that he could not stand up during a brief visit with family members on Thursday, his wife, Samia, said in an interview with CPJ.…
New York, February 27, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes Sunday’s release of Tunisian journalist Hamadi Jebali but calls again for Tunisian authorities to release writer and human rights lawyer Mohamed Abbou, who has been jailed solely for expressing his views. Jebali, the longest-serving imprisoned journalist in the Arab world, was among 1,600 of prisoners…
AFGHANISTAN: 1 Ali Mohaqqiq Nasab, Haqooq-i-Zan (Women’s Rights) Imprisoned: October 1, 2005 The attorney general ordered editor Nasab’s arrest on blasphemy charges after the religious adviser to President Hamid Karzai, Mohaiuddin Baluch, filed a complaint about his magazine. “I took the two magazines and spoke to the Supreme Court chief, who wrote to the attorney…
TUNISIA Some Tunisian journalists had hoped that an influx of world business, media, and human rights figures attending a United Nations conference in Tunis in November might prompt the government to relax its grip on the local media. Instead, President Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali’s 18-year-old administration ran true to form, stifling the critical press and…
New York, November 14, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists voiced outrage today at the assault on a French reporter in Tunis and the failure of police nearby to intervene. Reporter Christophe Boltanski of the French daily Libération was beaten and stabbed by four men late Friday near his hotel in the capital’s diplomatic quarter, which…
NOVEMBER 11, 2005 POSTED: December 2, 2005 Christophe Boltanski, Libération ATTACKED Boltanski, a reporter with the French daily Libération, was beaten and stabbed by four men near his hotel in the diplomatic quarter of Tunis, which was heavily patrolled by police. He needed several stitches in a stab wound in his back. Boltanski was in…