Tunisia

Tunisian government efforts to force out the president of a critical journalists union is part of a campaign to eliminate independent media in the country, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said Wednesday. The campaign started on May 4 when a group of pro-government journalists and followers of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali prevented National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (NSTJ)...

Radio Kalima journalist Zakia Dhifawi was arrested by six plain-clothes Tunisian policemen Tuesday afternoon as she was leaving a trade union building in Tunis and was held for an hour at the Charles de Gaulle Street police station, where she was subjected to humiliating treatment. Kalima trainee journalist Faten Hamdi was meanwhile threatened with prosecution yesterday, three days after she was...

Plainclothes police surrounded the offices of a newly launched satellite radio station in Tunisia and detained one of its journalists on Tuesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported quoting local journalists. Police continued their siege of the station Wednesday. The journalist, Dhafer Otay of Radio Kalima, said he was held for four hours and then released without charge...

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the intimidation of Tunisian journalists who tried to cover efforts on December 30 last by the opposition Progressive Democratic Party (PDP) to demonstrate against Israeli attacks on Gaza. Two journalists were assaulted and three faced harassment in Tunis, according to several CPJ interviews. Al-Jazeera correspondent Lotfi Hajji told CPJ...

A court in Gafsa (350 km south of Tunis) has sentenced reporter Fahem Boukadous in absentia to six years in prison on a charge of “forming a criminal association liable to attack persons and their property” for covering demonstrations in the Gafsa mining region. Boukadous works for Al-Hiwar Attounsi, a privately-owned TV station based in Italy that broadcasts to Tunisia. “This harsh sentence is...

Faten Hamdi, a reporter at Kalima Radio, was arrested by a group of policemen and violently dragged to El Gorjani Police Station after being physically assaulted in front of Tunis's Preparatory Institute for Art and Humanities Studies, the Observatory for the Freedom of Press, Publishing and Creation in Tunisia (OLPEC) has reported. The Kalima reporter was on November 24 covering protests...

Tunisian authorities have pressed charges against against TV reporter Fahem Boukadous because of his coverage of this year’s protests in the Gafsa mining region, 350 km south of Tunis. This he did for the independent Tunisian TV station Al-Hiwar Attounsi, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Boukadous is also charged with putting foreign news media in contact with labour leaders in Gafsa...

On the 21st anniversary of the coup that brought Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to power, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on the longtime leader to end his government's repressive media tactics. Ben Ali, who seized power from Habib Bourguiba in a bloodless coup, has pursued some of the most restrictive press tactics in the Arab world, CPJ research shows. Through...

The Tunisian government has seized the latest issue of an opposition newspaper and to summon an independent editor to appear before a public prosecutor, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. The Interior Ministry seized the October 22 issue of Mouatinoun, the weekly newspaper of the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties party, for “publishing unlawful allegations,” said...

Tunisia promotes itself as a progressive nation that protects human rights, but an investigation has found that it aggressively silences journalists and others who challenge the policies of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. In a new report, 'The Smiling Oppressor', the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has found that journalists are subjected to routine imprisonment, assault, harassment, and