Tunisia: Behind the Western mask

Khaled Hroub | International Herald Tribune
Friday, November 19, 2004
CAMBRIDGE, England

Until 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 Tunis succeeded in attracting the world's most prestigious summit on the free exchange of information.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.