Young woman journalist arrested and manhandled while covering student demo

Police used violence to arrest reporter Fatine Al-Hamdi yesterday in Tunis, hitting her with a baton, dragging her by the hair and holding her for four hours at Sidi Bachir police station, where they interrogated her at length about the new independent radio station she works for, Radio Kalima, due to be launched next month. She was covering a student demonstration at the time of her arrest. “Journalists reporting for Tunisia's few independent media such as the online magazine Kalima and the TV station Al-Hiwar Attounsi are closely watched and often prevented from covering events,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Yesterday's incident does not bode well for Radio Kalima's launch in a few weeks' time but Tunisia needs more than the newspapers owned by the state and the president's cronies, which never cover protests.” Hamdi was arrested outside the Preparatory Institute for Literary Studies and Social Sciences before she had a chance to approach the protesting students. The police broke her camera and took her audio recorder, and then questioned her about her activities at Radio Kalima and the other people working for the station. She told Reporters Without Borders the police tried to pressure her to become an informer. “They proposed that I should work for them, supplying them with information about the stories that are going to be covered by the station,” she said. The Observatory for Freedom of the Press, Publishing and Creation in Tunisia (OLPEC), a Reporters Without Borders partner organisation, issued a press release condemning the “persecution of journalists and human rights activists” and calling on the authorities to “cease such practices as Tunisia prepares to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” Hamdi is one of a team of young journalists who have joined the staff of the web magazine Kalima for the launch of its radio station, which is due to begin broadcasting independent news and information online and by satellite next month. Tunisia was ranked 143rd out of 173 countries in the press freedom index which Reporters Without Borders issued on 22 October.