Global Policy Forum

By Patrick Burnett

Just days before the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) got under way in Tunis last week, United States State Department spokesman Adam Ereli expressed concern about restrictions on freedom of speech and political activity in Tunisia (http:// tunis.usembassy.gov/tunisian_cooperat ion.html) . Over the next few days, the Tunisian government made quite clear that it would not tolerate freedom of expression. Journalists were harassed and beaten, an alternative civil society meeting was effectively shut down, and meetings discussing human rights and freedom of expression were disrupted. This prompted the official US delegation to the United Nations sponsored summit to express some disappointment at the role of the Tunisian government. "We are therefore obliged to express our disappointment that the government of Tunisia did not take advantage of this important opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to freedom of expression and assembly in Tunisia," said a press note issued by the delegation (http://tunis.usembassy.gov/ tunisian_cooperat ion.html) .

Interestingly, at the same time as the US decries the human rights situation in the country, Tunisia remains an important ally in the US ‘war on terror'. The US Department of Defence International Military Education and Training (IMET) program has trained over 3,600 Tunisian military officers and technicians since its inception in the mid-1980's. In 2004, 87 Tunisian military personnel took part in the IMET program at a value of $1.88 million. The U.S. Department of Defense also supports Tunisia's counter-terrorism program through bilateral training exercises and special counter-terrorism training courses for selected Tunisian participants. (http:// tunis.usembassy.gov/tunisian_cooperat ion.html)

The US has previously supplied the Tunisian government with military hardware in the form of aircraft parts, machine guns and ammunition (http://www.fas.org/asmp/profiles/655-2002/FM S/Tunisia.pdf) . According to a 2005 report from the World Policy Institute, Tunisia received $4,646,000 in military assistance despite a poor human rights record and serious abuses by the government (This figure is for 2003, the latest year for which details are available).

The report's executive summary is worth noting: "Perhaps no single policy is more at odds with President Bush's pledge to ‘end tyranny in our world' than the United States' role as the world's leading arms exporting nation. Although arms sales are often justified on the basis of their purported benefits, from securing access to overseas military facilities to rewarding coalition allies in conflicts such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, these alleged benefits often come at a high price. All too often, US arms transfers end up fueling conflict, arming human rights abusers, or falling into the hands of US adversaries." In 2003, the report notes, more than half of the top 25 recipients of US arms transfers in the developing world were defined as undemocratic by the US State Department's Human Rights Report because their citizens did not have the right to change their own government. (http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/rep orts/ wawjune2005.html)

US companies also assist the Tunisian regime in its crackdown on dissenters. Software from US company Secure Computing, called SmartFilter, is used by the Tunisian internet agency to block websites that the government does not approve of. One of the websites blocked during the course of the summit was that of the Citizen's Summit on the Information Society (CSIS). The CSIS event ended up not taking place due to the efforts of the Tunisian government to shut it down. It was supposed to provide a forum where issues that were not a part of the main summit venue could be discussed, but the Tunisian government feared it would be used as a platform to denounce its human rights abuses. Websites mentioned in a training session on how to circumvent internet filtering were also blocked, although its not clear if they were already blocked or had been blocked during the course of the summit.

According to a Human Rights Watch report released at the summit, the Tunisian Interior Ministry employs 500 people to monitor electronic communication. Activists told Human Rights Watch of email arriving late or not at all, of responses to emails coming from third parties posing as the recipient when the intended recipient said he never received the original message, of email inboxes being filled to saturation by repeated emails saying only, for example, "You are traitor."

The report says Tunisia has cited counterterrorism and the need to curb incitement to hatred and violence as among its justifications for censoring information online. However, tests carried out for the report showed that only four out of forty-one radical Islamist web sites were actually blocked. "The pattern of Tunisia's online censorship suggests that, in practice, its policy has been guided less by a fear of terrorism or incitement to violence than by a fear of peaceful internal dissent," says the report (http://hrw.org/ reports/2005/mena1105/7.htm#_ Toc119125755) . In the name of the ‘war on terror', the US, though its military and commercial support, is therefore propping up a regime that uses repressive policies against its own people in order to stay in power.

At the conclusion of the summit media and freedom of expression groups called for a full investigation by the United Nations into attacks on human rights and freedom of expression that took place in Tunisia during the summit. Steve Buckley, President of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters and Chair of the Tunisian Monitoring Group of freedom of expression organisations said: "Never again should a United Nations World Summit be held in a country that does not respect its international commitments to human rights and freedom of expression."

"This week in Tunis, both inside and outside the official Summit, we have witnessed serious attacks on the right to freedom of expression including harassment of delegates, attacks on Tunisian and international journalists and human rights defenders, denial of entry to the country, the blocking of websites, the censorship of documents and speeches, and the prevention and disruption of meetings." (http:// www.crisinfo.org/content/view/full/1029, http://www.rsf.org/ article.php3?id_article=15613)

The worrying trend highlighted by the holding of the WSIS in Tunisia, is the ease with which issues such as freedom of expression are sidelined as an important footnote, or simply sidelined all together. This approach allows governments to present glossy figures on their internet rollout while at the same time escape criticism over their human rights records.

Freedom of expression is a core component of a future information society and it should not be sidelined in the interests of diplomacy – nor should organisations working in the field of information and communications technology fail to acknowledge that this is an issue that should be at the centre of the agenda.

Tunis has highlighted issues related to human rights in the information society, but it should be clear that the problem is not confined to Tunisia. Efforts by governments to control internal dissent through repression, including through internet censorship, are on the increase, and pose a very real threat to the future structure and form of the information society. It will take a united front to reverse the trend.