Tunisia

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has denounced the suspension of a group of media professionals and the confiscation of their channel’s equipment, after a car linked to the National Army in Tunisia stopped them. The media professionals are Mokhtar Al-Kuholi, reporter for Jawhara FM, Qais Ammari, head of Al-Shorouk newspaper office in Sidi Bou Said, and Nour Al-Din Al...

While hailing Tunisia’s progress in respect for civil liberties, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) is disturbed by the violence that the security forces deliberately used against journalists during a demonstration in central Tunis on July 15 and by the fact that the Prime Minister Béji Caïd Essebsi held the media partly responsible July 18 for the current social and...

Tunisia’s new authorities have failed to to issue any broadcast licences in the six months since President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s ouster. They are supposed to be building a new, free and democratic Tunisia, but no democracy will be possible without truly independent media, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) reacted. The Tunisian broadcast media landscape has not...

Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned the police violence to which 15 journalists were subjected while covering the three days of demonstrations in the capital that began on May 5. Making no attempt to distinguish between protesters and media personnel, the police roughed up reporters, carried out arrests and confiscated or smashed equipment. “The use...

Reporter Abdelfattah Belaid was brutally attacked in Tunis Friday by police officers who pursued him into the headquarters of his newspaper, the French-language daily La Presse, after spotting him taking pictures of them dispersing protesters in the street outside. He was the second journalist to be beaten by police in Tunis in the past 24 hours. Belaid was photographing police officers using...

Fahem Boukadous, a correspondent for the satellite TV station El Hiwar Ettounsi, has been released after 189 days in detention, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. He had been serving a four-year jail sentence for allegedly participating in protests in the Gafsa mining region, 350 km south of Tunis, in 2008. Originally imposed in his absence, the sentence...

Lucas Mebrouk Dolega, a young French photographer working for the European Press Photo Agency (EPA), has died in Tunis’ Rabta hospital from the head injury he suffered when the police are said to have deliberately fired a tear gas grenade at him on January 14. “Our thoughts are with his family, his partner, and his friends,” Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said....

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has supported the decision to take strike action by members of the Syndicat national des journalistes tunisiens (SNJT), an IFJ affiliate, in protest over the attempts to censor media coverage of month-long riots over corruption and unemployment which have claimed 21 lives so far. "Journalists in Tunisia are right to show solidarity with citizens...

Tunisian authorities must end their weeks-long crackdown on bloggers and reporters covering street protests, the Committee to Protect Journalists has demanded. Scores of journalists have been detained in the past four weeks, three of whom remain in custody. Local and international reporters have faced continued harassment, including detention, restrictions on movement, and denial of entry into the...

Tunisian journalist Nissar Ben Hassen of Radio Kalima was arrested Tuesday after posting video footage of events in Chebba, 65 km north of the city of Sfax, online. He was editing another video on the violence in Mahdia at the time of his arrest, according to Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Members of a special presidential unit arrested him shortly after midday at...