Freedom of Expression is Inviolable: Can Ben Ali Listen?
The just- ended second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, WSIS, in Tunis, Tunisia, offered an avenue for the world to re-visit the benefits to be accrued from Information and Communication Technologies, ICTs. For three days, 20,000 delegates from 170 countries converged in the beautiful touristic town of Tunis to look at ways of using ICTs to help improve living standards in some of the world's poorest countries.
The UN Millennium Development Goals recommend that all villages in the world should be connected to the Internet by 2015. 10 years to the deadline, only 14% of the population worldwide is connected to the Internet. As usual, Africa represents just 3% of the world's Internet users. There are more Internet users in Seoul than in the whole of Sub Saharan Africa. Almost all schools are online in developed countries. But in Africa, only 1% of schools are online.
And so the focus at Tunis was how to bridge the digital divide that has engulfed the world and continues to widen the gap between rich and poor nations. Koffi Annan, UN Secretary -General, said nations had to show the political will to bridge the digital divide. Among the several outcomes of the Summit, the day-to-day management of the Internet was left in the hands of the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The Summit resolved to speed up funding for the Digital Solidarity Fund and the setting up of an International Forum to discuss Internet issues such as Spam and viruses, although it will have no binding authority.
The choice of Tunisia to host the summit was subject of several objections from human rights activists, who accused the UN of wrong casting given Tunisia's questionable human rights record. Were they right? In response to these criticisms, Koffi Annan said, "I realize there have been problems. I have not only read about it. I have myself raised this issue at the highest level, including the President of Tunisia". The UN Secretary-General pursued his defense: "Sometimes, by organizing these conferences whether in a country like Tunisia and others and putting the spotlight on them, where these issues of human rights and others are discussed, its extremely helpful and helps push the cause forward".
He was mistaken. In the run-up to the Summit, three UN human rights envoys told the BBC that they had received "numerous reports" of abuses and that respect for human rights was "deteriorating" in Tunisia. Two days to the Summit, Christophe Boltanski, journalist with the French newspaper, Liberation, was assaulted and stabbed on the streets of Tunis. On the eve of the Summit, a Belgian TV crew said they were "threatened" ahead of the summit while reporting on human rights in Tunisia. TV5 Monde, a French International TV channel, announced the withdrawal of a two-person team in Tunis because it had been "subjected to close surveillance". A day before the summit, Human Rights Watch released a report contending that dissidents criticizing the government online have been "arrested and thrown in jail" and that opposition websites are "routinely blocked".
Several journalists are serving prison terms in Tunisia for criticizing the government of President Ben Ali. In 2002 Zouhair Yahyaoui used his web site called Tunezine to criticize the political system in Tunisia. The government accused him of "disseminating inaccurate news" and sentenced him to two years in prison. He served 18 months, was released, suffered a heart attack and died.
As of January 2005, the League of Free Writers in Tunisia estimated that there were about 21-censored books in Tunisia. The Tunisian government is accused of throwing political opponents in jail and of cutting- off the telephone lines of human rights activists. In an interview with the BBC, Julen Pain, who runs the Internet Freedom Desk at the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders, said the summit was a "masquerade" adding that organizing a summit about the Internet in a country that is "so repressive" of the Internet freedom is "ridiculous".
But to the Tunisian government, the summit was a "total success". The government rejects any suggestion that it violates human rights or limits legitimate access to media. Though allegations of human rights violations are clearly documented, the government says it only censors online postings that are deemed an "incitement to violence or racial hatred". In a speech one week before the summit, President Ben Ali said he wanted to "encourage pluralism in the media landscape and broaden space for dialogue".
The events shortly before and during the summit deviated from this promise. Without a clear message addressed to the Tunisian government on its restriction of freedom of expression, WSIS 2005 failed to lay down a good blue print to bridge the digital divide.
The divide in question is not only about the unavailability of technological gadgets. It is also about the inaccessibility of information. Thus, the unjustifiable strict restriction of freedom of expression from Tunisia, through the whole of Africa and the rest of the developing world helps to perpetuate considerably, the digital divide. Technological availability and accessibility has to be accompanied simultaneously with the institution of an unencumbered free media if the digital divide has to shrink before 2015. Supplying all households with media gadgets in an environment of restricted freedom of expression will not serve the ideal of a global village. It is tantamount to giving all households a TV set which does not work. Not telling Tunisia the truth in its face is therefore unfortunate.
Freedom of expression is therefore indispensable in bridging the digital divide. It was the venerated John Stuart Mill who opined once that "the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race, the existing generation as well as posterity".
In advance to WSIS 2005, 8 opposition figures began a hunger strike on 18 October to demand respect for freedom of expression and association in Tunisia and the release of all prisoners of conscience. Their message to President Ben Ali was put years ago by John Milton in his Areopagitica: " Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties". Can Ben Ali listen?