Government-controlled media in Tunisia have launched a smear campaign against the Tunisian journalist and human rights defender Sihem Bensedrine. (23-MAY-05)
According to a press release from the National Council for Liberties in Tunisia (CNLT), the campaign was aimed at sullying the reputation of the spokesperson of CNLT, Sihem Bensedrine, in response to the publication of its report of “Misinformation in the Tunisian Media” on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day earlier this month.
On Press Freedom Day, Bensedrine spoke at the Freedom of Expression Foundation in Norway and also had talks with Norwegian PEN and the Human Rights House Foundation (HRH) about further cooperation.
The campaign of defamation orchestrated by the special services of the ministry of the interior, as usual, took different forms ranging from insults to calumnies in order to tarnish the honor and hurt the dignity of the persons attacked, said Abdl Kader Ben Khemis, secretary general of the CNLT.
In addition to accusations of treason and allegiance to foreign powers, Bensedrine was referred to by privately owned papers, widely known as supporting the government’s positions, as a prostitute, said Ben Khemis.
He said the campaign has been launched by newspapers believed to be on the (pay)roll of the ministry of the interior, charging specifically the publications As-Shouruq (The Sunrise), Al Hadath (The Event), As-Sareeh (The Candid View) and Al-Mulahedh (The Observer).
The CNLT provided a translation into French of a piece run by As-Shouruq dated 8 May, entitled “When the Viper Shows up We Will Crush It Under Our Heels”. According to this daily, Sihem Bensedrine “has a past of selling her conscience and her behind and other things too- to foreigners in geeneral and to Zionists in particular”.
The paper added that “after her long walk toward servility, she now moves forward looking proud of what she has accomplished in the field of media and political prostitution”.
Ben Sedrine is also portrayed as “a person struck by hysteria and delirium”. The piece which is signed by the editor of As-Shouruq, Abdel Hamid Riahi, claimed that Ben Sedrine was on “a suspicious mission to Iraq” under Paul Bremer. The purpose of the mission during the invasion was to inquire about press freedom violations under Saddam Hussein’s regime, said As-Shouruq.
This smear campaign is not the first of its kind against Bensedrine. She has been attacked quite often by privately owned papers in Tunisia and accused of treason and allegiance to Western powers and Zionists and prostitution. Scores of human rights defenders, political activists, former high-ranking officials who served under President Bourguiba, including former Prime Minister Mohamed Mzali, and even political prisoners, have been referred to in the state-run media as traitors and foreign and Israeli agents and sex maniacs.
Under former Tunisian President Bourguiba, opposition figures and rights defenders were attacked by papers owned by the ruling party or the state, but not by privately owned papers.
In March, one of the most respected journalists in the region, Mohamed Kreshan, was viciously attacked by two Tunisian privately owned papers, Al-Hadath and As-Sareeh, following the publication of an opinion piece in the London-based independent daily Al-Quds.
Kreshan, who left Tunisia in the mid-1990s to join the BBC in London and later the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, criticized the state-run media for turning a blind eye to the angry reactions among Tunisians to President Ben Ali’s invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to attend the WSIS meeting in Tunis in November.
Kreshan’s objective opinion on the Tunisian media is shared by most Tunisian journalists who suffer on a daily basis from a Damocles sword of censorship hanging over their necks and from marginalization and the loss of their jobs, should they take their courage with both hands to express their opinions, said the emerging independent Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (SJT) on 15 March.
