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The notion that Tunisia's less-than-democratic government is unfriendly to outspoken journalists is nothing new. But according to a story in OJR by Andrew Stroehlein, Tunisian authorities have recently expanded their policies of anti-free speech brutality to their first online journalist.
Web publisher Zouhair Yahyaoui was arrested, allegedly tortured, and sentenced to two years in jail for "spreading false information" through his blog and news site TUNeZINE. Excerpt:
Link Discuss (via poynter.org)In late May, for example, the satirical online magazine hosted a Web poll asking readers to vote whether Tunisia was a republic, a kingdom, a zoo or a prison.
Yahyaoui also openly discussed a tourist boycott of Tunisia in protest of the country’s human rights record -- a particularly touchy subject for the regime as tourism is a key sector of the Tunisian economy and one that has already been hit hard in the past year in the aftermath of 9/11.
Yahyaoui’s downfall, however, was probably his publishing of an online article, actually a letter by his uncle, Mokhtar Yahyaoui, a former judge, saying the Tunisian judiciary showed a total lack of independence.