Highway Africa News Agency (Grahamstown)
Angella Nabwowe, Highway Africa News Agency (HANA)
24 February 2005
Geneva — The latest disturbing news from the second preparatory meeting of the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society is the blocking of the circulation of the report about Freedom of expression in Tunisia released Tuesday by the IFEX Tunisia monitoring group.
IFEX is a consortium of media organisations around the world fighting for freedom of expression..
During the media caucus this evening, Steve Buckley, world president of the World Association of Community Broadcasters(AMARC) informed stakeholders that the WSIS secretariat had banned them from distributing the document in any meetings or rooms except the one for the civil society plenary.
The 60-page report released Tuesday details the imprisonment of individuals, blocking of news and information websites, police surveillance of emails and internet cafes, lack of pluralism and press censorship and more.
The mission was composed of the International Publishers Association (IPA), World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), World Press Freedom Committee, World Association of Newspapers (WAN), Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and the Centre for Human Rights and Democratic studies among others.
"They want us to sign a statement saying that we shall not distribute the report in any of the desginated conference venues except civil society. They maintain IFEX is not accreditated but IFEX is not an organisation -- it is a consortium of organisations accredited by the WSIS" Buckley reported.
Buckley views this as double standards as the response from the Tunisian pro- government delegation criticising the report is being circulated as an officiual document at the conference.
" This is a delay move. If we don't get a response from the secretariat by tomorrow, we shall be left with no choice but to give the WSISsecretariat a deadline to have the report distributed because it was submitted to them with a covering letter with the five organisations that compiled the report and are accreditated by WSIS".
He says that delaying the distribution of the report is typical of the Tunisian censorship techiniques.
According to Article 13 of the Tunisian press code, a declaration must be lodged with the Ministry of the Interior before the publication of any periodical. In exchange, the Ministry of the Interior must hand out a "récépissé" (receipt). The declaration must include: The title of the periodical, the details of the publisher, the details of the printer, the language(s) in which it is drafted. By virtue of Article 14, before the printing of any periodical, the printer requires the receipt delivered by the Ministry of the Interior. In practice the receipt is almost never issued, thus preventing the creation of a certain number of periodicals in Tunisia.
Mark Bench, Executive Director WPFC refers to the situation as government censorship made possible by the United Nations. "I understand there was a rule at UN that if a government wishes to block any communication of an NGO, they may do so because who are we? However, coming from a country where one can say whatever they want, because this is guaranteed in the constitution, we find that this isgovernment censorship here at the UN. We are accredited, why can we not say what we want to?"
Luckson Chipare,Regional Director of MISA who presented the IFEX report to the conference on Tuesday, says "we are registered to be here, when we were printing the report they didn't inform us of a second decision of whether or not to have the report circulated."
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