With the election scheduled for October 6, journalists are concerned about the repression of public media and the legal proceedings against some of their colleagues.
Who will be the journalists allowed to cover the presidential election in Tunisia? As the political space shrinks with the arrests of opponents, the media landscape is also shrinking as the vote scheduled for October 6 approaches.
The latest example: within the public agency Tunis Afrique Presse (TAP), the National Union of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) expressed alarm on Friday, July 5, about the deletion of a dispatch announcing a presidential candidacy. “Although several local and foreign media outlets picked up the information from TAP, the agency’s CEO, Najeh Missaoui, gave “instructions” to completely and permanently delete it from all of the agency’s media outlets,” the press release denounces.
The candidate in question is Mondher Zenaïdi, considered one of the main opponents of the head of state, Kaïs Saïed, who has not yet made official his intention to run for a second term. The person concerned confirmed the treatment he received. “My announcement of candidacy, on July 4, was made in a climate of repression illustrated by the censorship of my announcement by the TAP agency,” reacted his Facebook account the former minister in exile of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, while expressing his “determination to mobilize Tunisians for elections that are salutary and full of hope. “
Implicated in a privatization case for the benefit of the son-in-law of the deposed former president – for which he denies any involvement – Mondher Zenaïdi is not the only political actor ostracized by TAP. According to the SNJT, coverage of a press conference by the Free Destourian Party (PDL, opposition), on July 6, was canceled by the decision of the editorial management. The PDL then announced the candidacy of its president, Abir Moussi, who has been imprisoned since October 2023. These decisions “surprised the agency’s journalists and revived their fears of seeing the agency once again become a tool at the service of politics,” warned the SNJT.
“Propaganda organ”
The gradual repression of the media in Tunisia began the day after the coup carried out by Kaïs Saïed on July 25, 2021. Law enforcement officers then closed the offices of the Qatari channel Al Jazeera in Tunis, without any explanation or warrant. They have remained closed since. A few days later, the CEO of the national television was dismissed. The new management quickly excluded any dissenting voices from the sets, limited political debates and focused the newspaper on the activities of the executive.
In November 2022, the SNJT denounced “the intention to transform national television into a propaganda organ in the pay of the regime in power”. In January 2023, a management circular then prohibited employees from speaking “in the media on subjects related to their work or to the establishment of Tunisian television without prior authorization”, warning that any statement contrary to “the higher interest of the State” could be subject to disciplinary measures.
Within the private media, dozens of journalists and political show hosts are already facing legal proceedings. They are notably accused of “disseminating false information” on the basis of Decree-Law 54 promulgated by Kaïs Saïed in September 2022 and risk up to ten years in prison. “We are in a worse situation than under Ben Ali or Bourguiba, because at the time there were not as many journalists in prison or prosecuted. Censorship is back, even in the private media,” worries Amira Mohamed, member of the executive board of the SNJT, in an interview with Le Monde.
On May 11, Borhen Bsaïes, the host of “L’Emission impossible” – one of the most listened to in Tunisia – and two of his columnists, lawyer Sonia Dahmani and journalist Mourad Zeghidi, were arrested and sentenced to one year in prison. Also broadcast on IFM radio, the show “90 Minutes” was stopped in June, before the end of the season, officially for “economic reasons”, while its presenter, Khouloud Mabrouk, had been summoned by the special brigade of the National Guard of Tunis for comments made on air by opponents.
Fear of reprisals
The fear of reprisals is illustrated in the reduction in the number of political broadcasts as well as in the editorial line chosen by the columnists and editorialists invited to comment on current events.
Elyes Gharbi, host of “Midi Show” on Mosaïque FM, announced at the end of June his decision to leave the show at the end of the season. The tone of this program, until then critical of the government in place, had already undergone a notable change after the arrest of Noureddine Boutar, the director of the radio, imprisoned for three months for “conspiracy against state security” and “money laundering”. He is accused of having used the radio’s money to steer the media’s editorial line against the government.
At the same time, Elyes Gharbi and one of his columnists, the satirical journalist Haythem El Mekki, were also prosecuted for contempt by a law enforcement union after comments made on air about the attack carried out on May 9, 2023, near the Ghriba synagogue, during the annual Jewish pilgrimage to the island of Djerba, by a National Guard agent.
“It has become very difficult, if not impossible, to do this job. There are cases that we are not allowed to talk about, not to mention colleagues who are in prison for expressing banal opinions. Practicing independent political journalism in Tunisia today has become impossible. I think that when school starts again, there will be almost no more political sets,” Haythem El Mekki regretted in a statement to Le Monde at the time of ending thirteen years of satirical columns on Mosaïque FM.
