Tunisian activist jailed over Facebook message
2009-07-14
Reporters without Borders (RSF) on Monday (July 13th) denounced Tunisia's 8-month prison penalty for a 68-year-old female human rights activist over a Facebook post. Khedija Arfaoui, was convicted last Saturday of "disturbing public order" after posting a message about children allegedly being kidnapped in Tunisia for their organs. RSF claimed that the conviction has no legal basis since Tunisia "has no Internet laws". Arfaoui posted an existing message and was not responsible for starting the rumour, RSF added.
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Kastalli Chérif Posted 2009-07-14
This sets a serious precedent. It will limit individual freedoms and have us once against accept self-censorship. This amounts to intimidation. The woman is a victim of the will of the cyber-police, who want to punish Internet-goers. The culture of the Internet is based on the sharing and diffusion of information. The authenticity of the information becomes clear from how it is received and reacted to by the Internet-goers. Our situation is a serious one. We are headed straight to the abyss. The blame for this lies with our news system, which has been totally taken over. This translates into a complete lack of transparency, bad governance, and the secretive management of state affairs. If official information is not candy-coated, then it is just masked completely. Our newspapers are domestic only, so Tunisians are confusedly searching for news elsewhere; they have no trust in official news. Alas, Tunisians have more trust in false rumours than in the censors who move their strangling hands of our tools of information. This is the case of Dr Khedija Arfaoui, the retired university professor who has just unveiled the failure of our information system at the relational and organisational levels. At the relational level, the tendency is one of a break between the Tunisians and the official news, which is considered untrustworthy and late in the coming, and it treats the people in in a paternalist manner, making them out to be children as it sees them as idiots. At the organisational level, this represents the complete agony of our system, which suffocates us under the horrible pressure of censorship and kills all of the country's creative capacity. Into the abyss, it takes with it the other state structures, such as the judicial apparatus and the other institutions of state control. -Kastalli Chérif, a farmer from Béja
BOUTABA BRAHIM Posted 2009-07-15
it's a shame sometime to hear these bad news, it's always the same when it come to human right in our ARAB WORLD,how the they wan us to be level with the other developed world,freedom of expression is the first, with all respect to others. Freedom of choice is the second, one we will be free,,,inschaallah, AMIIIIN.
boufikr mohamed Posted 2009-07-16
The problem is they (( government )) from top down talk and loud about democratie and freedom of speach , is like they are the ones who created that kind of idea. go figure. shame shame shame.and they forget that the people are highly educated Thanks to Bourguiba and his generation of Great leaders.
Anonymous Posted 2009-07-16
Some Tunisians still don't understand what is going on in Tunisia. They complain about lacking human rights and demand freedom of expression in order to be equal to other people in the developed world. It is very dangerous to say such things. This is seditious language. You are undermining the security of the state when you speak like that. The Tunisian state has chosen to breed Tunisians (I can't say citizens or people)like others breed cattle, pigs or chickens. This, you should understand. In a country like China there is re-education for people who don't understand what the state says. In Tunisia there is repression. The state has got no time for education or re-education. It is busy with important things which are none of your concern. Former French president Chirac who visited Tunisia in 2003 and understood what was going on told Tunisians not to complain anymore about human rights because the first right they have is the right to eat, and he could see they were not starving. In France, since Descartes they are used to say: 'I think, therefore I exist'. But such saying is reserved to the French. Chirac wanted the Tunisians to say: 'I eat, therefore I exist'. So please, listen to him, he is a wise man. Stop thinking. Go and eat. This makes life less complicated and you won't have problems. Of course, it won't make you more clever. But you don't need that in Tunisia. On the other hand it will make you fatter. Try it and forget about Facebook. Have you ever seen anybody eating a Facebook?
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