Tunisia
Organisation:
Domain name : .tn
Population : 10,383,577
Internet-users : 2, 800,000
Average charge for one hour's connection at a cybercafé : from 50 centimes to 1 euro
Average monthly salary : 310 euros
Number of private Internet service providers : 5
Number of public Internet service providers : 7
Number of imprisoned bloggers : 0
The Internet was the target of numbers of attacks in 2008 preventing all criticism of the regime from being widely broadcast. But ironically it is the telecommunications sector that is the motor of the Tunisian economy. While there are now more than a score of access providers, the operator Planet.tn, owned by one of the daughters of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, still has the greatest share of the market. The president continues to runs a very strict policy on net filtering and self-censorship seems to be the rule among Tunisian bloggers. The Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI) is the public regulatory body, which rents out bandwidth to access providers. The systematic filtering of opposition websites is also backed up by an arsenal of instructions. Cybercafés are under surveillance and under Tunisian law their managers are responsible for the activities of their customers and it is sometimes necessary to produce ID to go online in a café. It is not unusual either for owners to tell them not to browse some sites that are seen as “subversive”. Instructions to this effect are displayed on cybercafé walls. Filtering websites is a widespread practice given the popularity of cyberspace with the Tunisian people. The 281 ‘Publinets’ – public Internet access spots – are very popular with 18-25 year olds. The best known human rights websites as well as the main proxies like Anonymizer (http://www.anonymizer.com/) and Guardster (http://www.guardster.com/) are inaccessible. Filtering is an everyday problem for Tunisian bloggers, who held a “day against blog censorship” on 4 November 2008. Since the country of Zine el- Abidine Ben Ali is one of the most draconian on the Internet., community information sharing websites like Dailymotion, YouTube or Facebook are regularly blocked because of content critical of the president’s policies. Emails of some human rights activists are also filtered. A success which has its downside Tunisia is one of North Africa’s most connected countries and the success of the Web eases access to news and information. But some websites are the targets of computer attacks. Footage posted on the Web on 10 April 2008, showed the seriousness of clashes in the mining basin of Gafsa, in the south of the country when the authorities put down a demonstration in the cities of Redeyef and Aïn Moulares and were one of the rare sources of information about the events there. On 11 June 2008, the blogs samsoum-us (http://samsoumus. blogspot.com/2008/06/2eme-mort-virtuelle-jemhabitue. html), romdhane (http://romdhane.maktoobblog.com) and RoufRouf (http://roufrouf.blogspot.com) were made inaccessible over posts about clashes in Redeyef in April between the army and workers angry at unemployment and food price rises, in which one demonstrator was shot dead. In two years, the news website Tunisnews (http://www.tunisnews.net) suffered two computer attacks and its list of articles was destroyed in 2003 and 2006. Although Tunisnews does not know who was behind the attacks, it noted that they coincided with the publication of articles critical of the regime. The year 2008 was one of the blackest in Tunisia with more than a score of anti-establishment websites hacked into or blocked. The blog of Tunisian journalist Zied el-Heni http://journalistetunisien. blogspot.com was blocked in October 2008 following the release of Reporters Without Borders’ 2008 press freedom index (http://journali s te- tuni sien.blogspot .com/2008/10/ r s f - classement-mondial-de-la-libert-de.html), in which Tunisia was ranked 143 out of 173 countries surveyed. It is however available on the following address: http://journaliste-tunisien-2.blogspot.com/. The news website, Nawaat.org suffered its worst cyber-attack since it was founded, on 16 June 2008. Its database was wiped and its home page changed. The blogs of human rights defenders Sami Ben Gharbia (http://www.kitab.nl/) and Astrubal (http://astrubal.nawaat.org/) were also affected. Their blogs are still inaccessible because parts of their databases were destroyed. The websites have been partially restored since then. The website of the magazine Kalima (http://www.kalimatunisie.com/) has been inaccessible since 8 October 2008. It posted a report on violent incidents in front of the Tunisian palace of justice on 7 October, during which security forces beat defendants under the noses of the judges. The magazine’s editor said she thought the attack was intended to censor this news. Emails and personal connections under surveillance Personal details of individuals with Internet subscriptions are transmitted monthly to ATI, which manages the entire email system in Tunisia. The law on Posts of 1998 authorises the interception of electronic mail that “threatens public order and national security”. Private connections belonging to some journalists and opposition figures are cut for “technical reasons” or the output is reduced so as to increase the time it takes to download web pages, restricting consultation of websites as a result. Such practices gradually have a discouraging effect on the blogosphere, which shows less zeal for criticising government policies. Some bloggers even give up altogether. But computer security experts argue that Internet connections should be individualised, so that two Internet users criticising the regime would not have the same connection or the time to look up the same websites. Moreover this connection would not be specific to a particular computer but to an individual account and the connection for an individual would remain the same at home as at the office. It is not easy for human rights activists to access their emails. Such messages coming from human rights organisations like the International Association for the Support of Political Prisoners (AISPP), the news website Tunisnews or that of Reporters Without Borders are often unreadable. Several sources say that these emails arrive in their inboxes and it is possible to open them, but the messages are empty and once opened disappear from the inbox. “It appears to be badly-concealed filtering” one specialist said.
Links http://www.kalimatunisie.com: website of online newspaper Kalima, critical of the government. (French and Arabic)
http://tn-blogs.com/: digest of Tunisian blogs (French and Arabic)
http://tunisiawatch.rsfblog.org/ : "For a free and democratic Tunisia”, website censored inside Tunisia.
https://www.sesawe.net/ (English): for more information about “individual connections”.
Population : 10,383,577
Internet-users : 2, 800,000
Average charge for one hour's connection at a cybercafé : from 50 centimes to 1 euro
Average monthly salary : 310 euros
Number of private Internet service providers : 5
Number of public Internet service providers : 7
Number of imprisoned bloggers : 0
The Internet was the target of numbers of attacks in 2008 preventing all criticism of the regime from being widely broadcast. But ironically it is the telecommunications sector that is the motor of the Tunisian economy. While there are now more than a score of access providers, the operator Planet.tn, owned by one of the daughters of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, still has the greatest share of the market. The president continues to runs a very strict policy on net filtering and self-censorship seems to be the rule among Tunisian bloggers. The Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI) is the public regulatory body, which rents out bandwidth to access providers. The systematic filtering of opposition websites is also backed up by an arsenal of instructions. Cybercafés are under surveillance and under Tunisian law their managers are responsible for the activities of their customers and it is sometimes necessary to produce ID to go online in a café. It is not unusual either for owners to tell them not to browse some sites that are seen as “subversive”. Instructions to this effect are displayed on cybercafé walls. Filtering websites is a widespread practice given the popularity of cyberspace with the Tunisian people. The 281 ‘Publinets’ – public Internet access spots – are very popular with 18-25 year olds. The best known human rights websites as well as the main proxies like Anonymizer (http://www.anonymizer.com/) and Guardster (http://www.guardster.com/) are inaccessible. Filtering is an everyday problem for Tunisian bloggers, who held a “day against blog censorship” on 4 November 2008. Since the country of Zine el- Abidine Ben Ali is one of the most draconian on the Internet., community information sharing websites like Dailymotion, YouTube or Facebook are regularly blocked because of content critical of the president’s policies. Emails of some human rights activists are also filtered. A success which has its downside Tunisia is one of North Africa’s most connected countries and the success of the Web eases access to news and information. But some websites are the targets of computer attacks. Footage posted on the Web on 10 April 2008, showed the seriousness of clashes in the mining basin of Gafsa, in the south of the country when the authorities put down a demonstration in the cities of Redeyef and Aïn Moulares and were one of the rare sources of information about the events there. On 11 June 2008, the blogs samsoum-us (http://samsoumus. blogspot.com/2008/06/2eme-mort-virtuelle-jemhabitue. html), romdhane (http://romdhane.maktoobblog.com) and RoufRouf (http://roufrouf.blogspot.com) were made inaccessible over posts about clashes in Redeyef in April between the army and workers angry at unemployment and food price rises, in which one demonstrator was shot dead. In two years, the news website Tunisnews (http://www.tunisnews.net) suffered two computer attacks and its list of articles was destroyed in 2003 and 2006. Although Tunisnews does not know who was behind the attacks, it noted that they coincided with the publication of articles critical of the regime. The year 2008 was one of the blackest in Tunisia with more than a score of anti-establishment websites hacked into or blocked. The blog of Tunisian journalist Zied el-Heni http://journalistetunisien. blogspot.com was blocked in October 2008 following the release of Reporters Without Borders’ 2008 press freedom index (http://journali s te- tuni sien.blogspot .com/2008/10/ r s f - classement-mondial-de-la-libert-de.html), in which Tunisia was ranked 143 out of 173 countries surveyed. It is however available on the following address: http://journaliste-tunisien-2.blogspot.com/. The news website, Nawaat.org suffered its worst cyber-attack since it was founded, on 16 June 2008. Its database was wiped and its home page changed. The blogs of human rights defenders Sami Ben Gharbia (http://www.kitab.nl/) and Astrubal (http://astrubal.nawaat.org/) were also affected. Their blogs are still inaccessible because parts of their databases were destroyed. The websites have been partially restored since then. The website of the magazine Kalima (http://www.kalimatunisie.com/) has been inaccessible since 8 October 2008. It posted a report on violent incidents in front of the Tunisian palace of justice on 7 October, during which security forces beat defendants under the noses of the judges. The magazine’s editor said she thought the attack was intended to censor this news. Emails and personal connections under surveillance Personal details of individuals with Internet subscriptions are transmitted monthly to ATI, which manages the entire email system in Tunisia. The law on Posts of 1998 authorises the interception of electronic mail that “threatens public order and national security”. Private connections belonging to some journalists and opposition figures are cut for “technical reasons” or the output is reduced so as to increase the time it takes to download web pages, restricting consultation of websites as a result. Such practices gradually have a discouraging effect on the blogosphere, which shows less zeal for criticising government policies. Some bloggers even give up altogether. But computer security experts argue that Internet connections should be individualised, so that two Internet users criticising the regime would not have the same connection or the time to look up the same websites. Moreover this connection would not be specific to a particular computer but to an individual account and the connection for an individual would remain the same at home as at the office. It is not easy for human rights activists to access their emails. Such messages coming from human rights organisations like the International Association for the Support of Political Prisoners (AISPP), the news website Tunisnews or that of Reporters Without Borders are often unreadable. Several sources say that these emails arrive in their inboxes and it is possible to open them, but the messages are empty and once opened disappear from the inbox. “It appears to be badly-concealed filtering” one specialist said.
Links http://www.kalimatunisie.com: website of online newspaper Kalima, critical of the government. (French and Arabic)
http://tn-blogs.com/: digest of Tunisian blogs (French and Arabic)
http://tunisiawatch.rsfblog.org/ : "For a free and democratic Tunisia”, website censored inside Tunisia.
https://www.sesawe.net/ (English): for more information about “individual connections”.
Published on
Updated on
20.01.2016
Middle East - North Africa
