Seventeen journalists are currently being prosecuted for their professional duty but also and especially for their opinions, said President of the National Union of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT), Yassine Jelassi.
Speaking Thursday in Tunis at a symposium to mark World Press Freedom Day, which coincides with May 3 each year, Jelassi said he regretted the “prosecution of journalists for criticising officials, denouncing political trials par excellence.
The courts are stepping up their prosecutions against freedom of expression, he accused.
Such a situation gives a degraded image of the media landscape in post-2011 Tunisia, the SNJT president denounced, stressing that the current landscape is peppered with recurrent trials, work bans, blackout practices and denial of access to information, which has become the daily lot of Tunisian journalists.
As a result, Tunisia’s press freedom ranking has plummeted by 48 points (in just 3 years), from 73rd in 2020 to 121st in 2023.
He pointed out that the official authorities rely today on a retrograde and liberticidal legal arsenal that enshrines repression and the logic of trials, citing as an example Decree-Laws No. 54 and No. 19, which impede access to information.
For his part, Nidhal Jurdi, representative of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Tunisia, said that several rapporteurs of UN committees, including those concerned with freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and the promotion of human rights, were unanimous in denouncing in a joint letter sent to Tunisia on January 23, 2023, the non-conformity of Decree-Law 54 with international human rights standards relating to freedom of the press and expression.
Taking the floor, Néji Baghouri, coordinator of media and communication programmes at UNESCO, stressed the need to guarantee the rights of journalists, an essential pillar of freedom of the press and expression.
In the same vein, Saloua Ghazouani, representative of ARTICLE 19, called on the Presidency of the Republic and the Prime Ministry to “review their communication policies in depth, urging them to show openness to the media and to favour access to information.
We demand an open communication policy that is capable of restoring the citizen’s confidence in the authority and the public administration,” she said.
The symposium is organised by the National Union of Tunisian Journalists in partnership with UNESCO, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Article 19, Access Now and the European Union.
Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse