w:st="on">Tunisia
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Behind the Western mask
Khaled Hroub | International Herald Tribune
Friday, November 19, 2004
CAMBRIDGE,
w:st="on">England
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recently, people wanting to use Tunisian Internet cafes, which are owned or
supervised directly or indirectly by the state, were asked to present ID cards
or their addresses. It is ironic, then, that
w:st="on">Tunis succeeded in attracting the world's
most prestigious summit on the free exchange of information.
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Tunisia
is a small and quiet country that is hardly ever in the news. Since 1987, when
the current president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, took power in a bloodless
palace coup, the state has staged presidential referendums every five years,
the latest on Oct. 24. A
cynic might say that its result - 94.5 of the electorate in favor of the
standing regime - represents a huge leap toward "political
liberalization" compared with results of the earlier polls: 99.4 percent
for the regime in 1989, 99.7 percent in 1994 and 99.5 percent in 1999.
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There has been scant reporting on this theatrical state of affairs by Arab
media, most surprisingly by Al Jazeera. The regime has been highly successful
in silencing not only the national press but also regional media. On Al Jazeera
alone, at least three programs have been canceled before their scheduled
broadcast after pressure from Tunis.
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Unfortunately, this is normality in an authoritarian third-world setting. What
is amazingly abnormal, however, is that such authoritarianism was rewarded by
being allowed to host the second round of the World Summit on the Information
Society earlier this week.
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In the summit's first round in Geneva, participants - including Tunisia -
declared their "common desire and commitment to build a people-centered,
inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can
create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge ... premised on the
purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting
fully upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." Meanwhile the
government's silencing of the national press has deprived its political
opposition of even the smallest opening to express critical views.
Ben Ali's Tunisia
is a bizarre story. On the one hand the state has succeeded in projecting a
polished image, proclaiming secularism, democracy and modernity with the
loudest of noise. These values have, of course, their "Tunisian
versions" and "specificities" that often strip them of meaning
and substance. Using such "values" Ben Ali won two constitutional
amendments allowing him to extend his term in office.
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According to human rights organizations, the state under the "Tunisian
model of democracy" has exercised the most oppressive measures against the
most basic of human rights. Meanwhile, Washington
has allocated to Tunis
the regional offices of its Middle East Partnership Initiative, meant to spread
democratization throughout the Arab world.
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The state security apparatus has rapidly built a draconian structure unique in
the region. Seemingly impervious to the mounting criticism of Western human
rights groups, the regime is extremely sensitive to the Arabic press.
Accordingly, Tunisian ambassadors across the Arab world have been working more
as censorship officials than diplomats.
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Filing complaints and threatening to cut off diplomatic relations for the
tiniest of issues has been standard practice of overworked Tunisian officials.
If a newspaper, even in discussing apolitical issues having nothing to do with
Tunisia, interviewed a member of the opposition from inside or outside Tunisia,
its editor would be bombarded by all kinds of attacks and pressures. Tunisian
diplomats would raise the issue with the highest-ranking people in the country
that had power over that newspaper.
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Anecdotes in Arab media circles about Tunisian intimidation and
ultrasensitivity are amazing. A number of Arab thinkers, for example, were not
allowed to attend seminars in Tunisia
because they had befriended Tunisian thinkers who are hated by the regime or
had co-authored publications with them.
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How has Tunis
managed this sleight of hand? By emphasizing secular discourse, the regime has
offered the West a comfortable illusion. It is not the secularism of the
Baathist regimes of Syria
and pre-invasion Iraq.
Nor is it the secularism of the monarchies of Jordan
or Morocco,
marred as they are by the principle of heredity. Here we have a republic that
is westernized in its political positions and in the socio-cultural program of
its elite, with extra doses of "democracy" jargon.
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For many Western governments Tunisia
has been a promising example of an evolving modern and democratic state. During
the 1990s Ben Ali's regime was deservedly given credit by most international
economic institutions for impressive improvement in
w:st="on">Tunisia's economic ranking. Yet an
increasingly political authoritarianism has developed in tandem with economic
liberalization and improvement, offsetting what would have been an otherwise
truly successful model.
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