The President of the Republic can no longer stand rumors, insults and threats on social networks. He thus expressed his anger in front of his Minister of Technologies on Tuesday, July 11, with whom he spoke about censorship. Facebook being the most widespread social network in Tunisia, it is very likely that the head of state is preparing his end.
Kaïs Saïed leaves very little room for doubt about his anger against what is happening on social networks. The press release published by the Presidency of the Republic on Tuesday, July 11 at 11:10 p.m. says a lot about his anger. Besides the late timing, the press release is sloppy, as if it had been written in haste and/or anger.
In the text of this press release, we read that Kaïs Saïed received Nizar Ben Neji, Minister of Communication Technologies, with whom he spoke about the role of “the Technical Agency for IT Security and the Technical Agency for Telecommunications”. It turns out that these two agencies do not exist in Tunisia. The president is probably talking about the National Computer Security Agency and the National Telecommunications Authority. About them, the president speaks of “ their role during this period when social networks are used to disseminate false information, spread rumors, smear reputations in addition to the slander and defamation that affect senior state officials with the aim of sowing trouble in official bodies and among leaders.
According to the president, these networks are used by parties known at home and abroad to target national security in Tunisia.
Underlining the criminal aspect of this kind of publication, Kaïs Saïed mentioned the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime of 2001, considered as the most relevant international agreement on cybercrime and electronic evidence. The president also referred to a recent position of the European Union which intends to ban any publication that calls for hatred, disobedience, or violence, as well as the censorship of any social network. The presidential communiqué concludes by emphasizing the need for Tunisia to respect freedom of thought and expression, but also to preserve national security and the application of the law to everyone. because what is happening now with the spreading of rumors is affecting the normal functioning of state institutions and civil peace”.
The presidential communiqué is full of approximations. In addition to the error in the name of public institutions, he speaks of the Budapest convention born before the creation of social networks and whose objectives are much broader than the intox circulating in them. It addresses computer crimes and Internet crimes generally including child pornography, copyright infringement and hate speech by harmonizing certain national laws. It turns out that Tunisia has not signed this Convention. Worse, Kaïs Saïed published a decree last October, the famous decree 54 liberticide, which punishes up to ten years in prison for crimes on the internet and social networks.
This Decree 54 is in no way in harmony with the principles of the Budapest Convention and has been used to silence journalists and bloggers. There are countless legal proceedings and arrests targeting them, the latest being the custody last Monday of Lassâad Bouazizi, a famous Islamist blogger and fierce opponent of Kaïs Saïed.
By summoning his Minister of Technologies to discuss the persistent problem of social networks, the President of the Republic admits, somewhere, that Decree 54 has not solved the problem.
Then the president talks about the European Union and the censorship of a social network. It is worth noting, in this regard, that the European Union has not yet decided anything concrete on the matter and that there is debate. As for the censorship of a social network, the European debate does not concern the fight against poisoning and crimes but concerns espionage in the undeclared war between China and the West. The social network in question is the Chinese TikTok which would be used by Beijing for espionage purposes.
If the commission has forbidden its use to its officials, it is not censored anywhere for the moment and several countries are opposed to this censorship, including Germany. There is only one American state (Montana) that announced its censorship, as early as January 2024, but it is more than likely that the decision will not be followed by effect. Several legal challenges have already been filed to counter the decision of the Governor of Montana.
Clearly, there is indeed debate on the censorship of a social network, but this has nothing to do with the content of social networks. Kaïs Saïed is in the process of decontextualizing real information with the aim of producing elements of language justifying a possible future censorship of a social network in Tunisia.
In Tunisia, the most widespread social network and the one that poses the most problems, in terms of intox, threats and insults is undoubtedly Facebook. It is frequented by 7.62 million Tunisian users, against 300,000 on Twitter, according to official figures from the platforms. Instagram is used by three million Tunisians, Linkedin by 1.69 million and Tiktok by 1.2 million.
Another figure, given by the Tunisian institute Emrhod Consulting, Tunisians devote 82 hours per month to Facebook, 66 hours to Instagram and 57 hours to TikTok.
Speaking of censorship to his minister, the president does not seem to be targeting a social network other than Facebook.
Technically, can he censor Facebook in Tunisia? The answer is positive, Facebook is already censored in some countries, all dictatorial or autocratic, like China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Burma and Turkmenistan. It even happened that Facebook was censored, punctually, before the 2011 revolution. It was not just Facebook, moreover, several opposition websites were censored and replaced by the famous message “error 404” from which the famous nickname Ammar 404 which describes censorship in Tunisia.
From there to saying that Kaïs Saïed intends to put censorship back on the agenda in Tunisia, there is only one step that we do not hesitate to take in view of the policy undertaken so far by the head of the state. In addition to Decree 54 on the basis of which he prosecutes journalists and bloggers, Kaïs Saïed had the majority of his political opponents thrown into prison, thus condemning them to silence.
He can no longer bear to be contradicted, insulted or defamed.
Why now? What changed?
The media and journalists, given the nature of their profession, have a civilized discourse without insults or outrages. Which is far from being the case with social networks. They posed no problem for the president when the attacks and insults targeted his political adversaries. At no time have we heard of the arrest of an aficionado of the president attacking a media or an opponent hostile to the coup regime.
However, in recent months, the Head of State and his government have become the target of mockery and insults on social networks and, particularly, Facebook. The page of the Presidency of the Republic is no exception and we read, daily, attacks in good and due form against the President. Attacks quickly censored and their authors banned from the page.
It should be noted, in passing, that the page is heavily frequented by fake accounts, especially Asian ones, which claim to support the president, as Business News noted last December.
Another point, the President of the Republic dismissed last March his attaché in charge of digital communication, Ihsen Sbabti, without appointing a replacement to date.
Noting the growth of hostile comments, the limits of decree 54 liberticide, that social networks are much more harmful than the media, Kaïs Saïed visibly intends to move up a gear by carrying out pure and simple censorship of Facebook. An idea already mentioned by the former governor of Sfax, Fakher Fakhfakh, at the time close to the President of the Republic before being ousted. This statement caused an outcry among Tunisians.
This is the conclusion that can be drawn from the meeting with Nizar Ben Neji and the content of his 11:10 p.m. press release in which he uses the appropriate language elements before setting up such a new project.
