New York, April 5, 2000–In a joint letter sent today to Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) strongly protested the Tunisian authorities’ continued harassment of journalist Taoufik Ben Brik, who is being persecuted solely for exercising his internationally guaranteed right to freedom of expression.…
Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in TUNISIA. New York, May 5, 2000 — Tunisian authorities lifted a travel ban imposed on journalist Taoufik Ben Brik, who arrived in France yesterday. But Ben Brik vowed to continue his 33-day hunger strike until his brother is freed from government custody, the Committee to…
Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in TUNISIA. New York, April 26, 2000 — Tunisian police assaulted a group of French press freedom advocates and journalists today when they attempted to visit Tunisian journalist Taoufik Ben Brik, who was in the 24th day of a hunger strike to protest two years of…
Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in TUNISIA. Click here to read CPJ and Human Rights Watch’s recent joint protest letter to President Ben Ali: New York, April 21, 2000—Tunisian journalist Taoufik Ben Brik today entered the 19th day of a hunger strike launched on April 3 to protest the Tunisian government’s…
By Joel CampagnaRoyal succession and rubber-stamp elections set the tone for a year in which Middle Eastern and North African governments continued to restrict press freedoms through a combination of censorship, intimidation, and media monopoly. Ballots in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen produced few surprises as longtime rulers stayed in power and maintained formidable obstacles…
Each year on World Press Freedom Day (May 3), CPJ announces its list of the ten worst enemies of the press. Those who made the list this year, as in the past, earned the dubious distinction by exhibiting particular zeal in the ruthless suppression of press freedom. They were singled out for their unrelenting and…
In a year that saw strongman Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali reelected in October with 99.42 percent of the vote, the press remained in the stranglehold of the Tunisian police state. For the second year in a row, CPJ named President Ben Ali one of the world’s top 10 enemies of the press. Since ousting “president…
Right after the police raided my house, on May 24, 1999, they seemed to vanish from the neighborhood. You didn’t see them in Street 7134, and they stopped hanging out in the local café. But this proved to be a short respite—the calm before the storm. In mid-June, just as I was sighing with relief…