[WSIS Edu] Let us boycott the second phase of the World Summit of the Information Society of TUNIS!

[Yves-François LE COADIC]

Let us boycott
the second phase of the World Summit of the Information Society of 
TUNIS!

After participating, in Tunis, in a conference on "Digital information 
and the stakes of the Information Society", preparatory to the World 
Summit of the Information Society which must be held next November, I 
refuse, as a scientist, to take part in this Summit. The posted 
objective of the Summit, accomodated by the Tunisian Government and 
profiting from the support and help of the President Zine El Abidine 
Ben Ali, is to promote the Information Society and to devote 
Communication and Information Technologies as strategic instruments of 
a balanced development from economic, social and cultural points of 
view. However this objective has few chances to be reached.
Indeed, in spite of standing diplomas which are regularlydecreed to it, 
Tunisia suffers from a serious deficit as regards respect of freedom of 
expression and political rights. If we point out the election time of 
October 2004: since the beginning of the campaign, TV journals of 
public channels did not have of cease to diffuse the images of 
President Ben Ali in his national round trip. Followed by the 
quasi-majority of the newspapers. "Nearly 98 % of media space were 
occupied by candidate-president Ben Ali and his party" according to the 
journalist and militant of the National Council for freedoms in Tunisia 
(CNLT) Sihem Ben Sedrine, quoted by the french newspaper “Le Monde”.
As I could note, it is the same in a non-electoral period: all the 
front-pages of the daily newspapers systematically grant a space (text 
and image) to the President. All the TV journals start by announcing 
the daily actions of the President. But, President Ben Ali does not 
appreciate the journalists who bring contradiction to him. Consequence: 
rather than to stay in prison, the journalist Taoufik Ben Brik chose to 
come to France. President Ben Ali does not like either Internet. 
Consequence: the censure. The regime has recourse to tricks enabling 
him to legalize the censure on Internet. "The manager of each Internet 
coffee is assimilated to an editor of publication" explains Mohamed 
Jmour, Secretary-general of the national association of lawyers in 
Tunisia. "It is responsible for the clicks of the Net surfers who come 
on his site and must save the name of each visitor with date and hour 
of visit". Each host is provided with an “informer” (identification 
number) who connects it to the Tunisian Agency fror Internet (ATI). 
This State department controls all the flow of the Web. In addition, 
the owner is subjected to the press and communication legislation 
Codes. Thus all the activities of emission, reception or exploitation 
on Internet depend on the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of 
Interior. Any person who connects to a private network without the 
approval of ATI can be punished of imprisonment ". The judgment of 
Zouhair Yahiaoui in 2001 for “propagation of false news” and 
“fraudulent use of Internet lines ” concerns these two codes. The 
“false news” being diffusion on Internet of a opened letter to Ben Ali 
signed by judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui, who denounced the dysfunction of 
justice in Tunisia; “the diversion of the lines” being creation, 
without authorization of its own satirical Web-magazine TUNeZINE. 
Lastly, when that is not enough, ATI pretexting a breakdown of Internet 
cuts the connections!
President Ben Ali does not like information. So, the decision to hold 
the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in 
Tunis in 2005 thus seems to me an aberration. For the lawyer Radhia 
Nasraoui, “in a country where there is no freedom of press, where the 
e-mails are systematically controlled and censured”, how  can we speak 
of “Information Society”?  About which freedom of expression can we 
speak  in a country where consulting the “subversive” Web sites  of 
“Amnesty International” or of “Reporters sans Frontières” is an offence 
liable to prison? It is certainly not freedom of information.

Yves F. LE COADIC
Professor
ISTS
CNAM
292 rue Saint-Martin
75141 PARIS Cedex 03 - France
--------------------------------
Téléphon/télécopie=33140272866
Courriel=lecoadic at cnam.fr


  
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