Nov 14 Report
At Hotel Amilcar, www.wsisblogs.org was accessible today.
Filters are in place ("fike not found" [sic, means site not found] ) for www.citizens-summit.org and
www.rsf.org. Did not check other sites.
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More seriously:
by IFEX - The IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group
http://campaigns.ifex.org/tmg/blocking.html
[ Internet Blocking and Human Rights Violations in Tunisia]

Tunisian President Ben Ali has expressed time and again his commitment to the development of the Internet while websites are being blocked and young people exploring the Web harassed, arrested, tortured and sentenced to heavy prison terms following unfair trials.

The government and state-run media constantly trumpet that access to the Internet is "free and a fact of life" without any mention of the high price internautes like Zouhair Yahyaoui or others have paid, and continue to pay for trying to access forbidden sites or to criticize President Ben Ali and his regime on the Internet.

More Tunisians have been arrested for expressing themselves on the Internet during the past three years than for views carried by the print media since the country’s independence, 48 years ago.

The most symbolic case that gives a clear idea about the lack of tolerance of freedom of expression on the Internet on the part of the Tunisian government is the case of Zouhair Yahyaoui.

Zouhair Yahyaoui established his online magazine TuneZine, in mid-2001, after learning how "to get through blocked sites" to quench his thirst for information and communication. His problems started after he posted on TuneZine an open letter sent in July 2001 to President Ben Ali by his uncle Judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui. In this letter, which the post office returned to the sender under the pretext that the address was unknown, and to which the state-controlled media turned a blind eye, Judge Yahyaoui denounced the lack of independence of the judiciary in the country.

Zouhair Yahyaoui was arrested on 4 June 2002 in an Internet café in Tunis. He was tortured and falsely accused of robbing his "employer," the owner of the Internet café, at a time when he was in fact jobless. He was also charged with "spreading false news" and sentenced to 28 months in prison. He said he was tortured and denied visits by his family and lawyer while in police detention. "I was handcuffed and ill-treated and no one knew where I was for five days," he said.

Internet cafés, known in Tunisia as Publinets, are under tight control by both the Ministry of Telecommunications and the Ministry of the Interior. Access to these public Cybercafes may be denied by the owner who is also entitled to check anything that is saved on a disk by a customer. It is the owner’s duty to call the police in case the content of what is saved is deemed to be a problem. Very often, computers available in Internet cafés are not equipped with disc drives or USB plugs. Internet users are asked quite often asked to show their ID to the owner or manager of the Internet café. The owners of public phones, faxes, and photocopiers are also required by the police to keep a watchful eye on their customers and not to hesitate to ask for their IDs.

Yahyaoui was released on parole at the end of 2003 after serving most of his prison sentence. His courage and local and international campaigns of solidarity helped end his ordeal. But it is unlikely that this young and intelligent university graduate will find a job in a country where the job market, including the private sector, often awaits the green light from the police to offer employment to young job seekers.

Yahyaoui said some of his friends who used to contribute to his online magazine have taken refuge in western countries because they felt Tunisia was no longer a safe place to live in. He added that, "Anyone who says anything against Ben Ali is considered a terrorist or a traitor." President Ben Ali and the state-controlled media often accuse rights defenders and political activists of "treason" and of "serving foreign interests."

During the IFEX-TMG mission to Tunisia in January 2005, direct testing was carried out of Internet blocking. The tests carried out through Internet Service Provider 3S GlobalNet indicated at least 20 news and information websites were blocked by Internet filtering systems.

The blocked sites were:

http://www.rezoweb.com/forum/politique/nokta.shtml
- Tunisia alternative political discussion board

http://www.rsf.fr/
http://www.rsf.org/
- website of international press freedom defenders, Reporters Without Borders

http://www.tunezine.com/
- Tunisian news and comment, editor was imprisoned

http://www.nahdha.net/
- website of banned Tunisian Islamist An-Nahdha movement

http://www.tunisnews.net/
- Tunisian oppositional news and politics

http://www.maghreb-ddh.org/
- Tunisian oppositional news and politics

http://www.albadil.org/
- online newspaper of the banned Tunisian Communist Workers Party

http://www.alternatives-citoyennes.sgdg.org/
- Tunisian independent/alternative news and information

http://www.tunisie2004.net/
- Tunisian oppositional politics, news, linked to the CPR (unrecognized political party)

http://www.cprtunisie.com/
- "official" website of the Tunisian CPR (Congress for the Republic, unrecognized)

http://tounes.naros.info/
- Tunisian oppositional politics, linked to the independent Democratic Initiative

http://www.globalprevention.com/marzouki.htm
- website of exiled Tunisian human rights defender, Moncef Marzouki

http://www.nawaat.org/
- Tunisian oppositional news and politics

http://www.perspectivestunisiennes.net/
- Tunisian oppositional news and politics

http://www.verite-action.org/
- website of Swiss NGO campaigning for human rights in Tunisia

http://www.maghreb-ddh.sgdg.org/www/
- Tunisian oppositional news and politics

http://www.multimania.com/solidarite26
- solidarity with Tunisian political prisoners

http://www.reveiltunisien.org/
- Tunisian oppositional politics, news, satire

http://www.kalimatunisie.com/
- "the Word", independent Tunisian news and politics

These sites are all available outside Tunisia and none appear to carry material which could justify blocking on the basis of internationally agreed freedom of expression standards. What they have in common is that they provide information and points of view which are independent and which are sometimes critical of the Tunisian government.

The TMG found similar patterns of website blocking through other Internet Service Providers when tested through proxy servers and this suggests that website blocking is specific, systematic and centrally controlled.

A possible exception may apply to Internet Service Providers whose Internet access is not only through the Tunisian Internet Agency but also through satellite.

The Internet blocking appears to be performed by the software application SmartFilter Version 3. Smartfilter is an application developed and marketed by a US company, Secure Computing. This application provides a series of website categories which may be switched on or off. In addition it allows for unique blocking of specified URLs.

The Tunisian use of SmartFilter appears to have the categories of nudity, pornography and anonymisers switched on. In addition a number of unique URLs are switched on to ensure website blocking. These include the news and information websites listed at Annex 2.

The technology provides flexibility for specific URLs to be switched on or off at short notice and we gathered anecdotal evidence that accessibility of some websites does vary from time to time. For years, for instance, the sites of international human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, and the Committee to Protect Journalists have been systematically blocked. So have been the sites of foreign newspapers such as French dailies Le Monde and Liberation and the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine and the monthly Le Monde Diplomatique. These sites were available in January 2005 while others, mainly those giving alternative Tunisia perspectives on Tunisia, remained blocked.

Amnesty International-Tunisia reported that the websites of the London-based international human rights group and of some of its sections in countries including France and Canada were no longer blocked at the end of January. Its own site, AI-Tunisia, was reported by members of the board of AI-Tunisia to be briefly accessible during the visit paid to Tunisia by the IFEX delegation. Members of the Board deemed this "not purely coincidental."

On 30 January Fathi Chamkhi, spokesperson for the Tunisian section of the Rally for an International Alternative of Development (le Rassemblement pour une alternative internationale de developpement, RAID-Tunisie), also known as the Tunisian section of ATTAC, reported that the site of his group can now be viewed in Tunisia for the first time in 5 years.

Chamkhi said in a press released carried by the daily online magazine Tunisnews, "the recent visit to Tunisia of the IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group "obviously contributed to this development." He added that the former campaigns to free Zouhair Yahyaoui from prison and the current ones to release the Youth of Zarzis and Ariana also contributed to the decision to stop blocking the website of RAID-ATTAC Tunisia. So did the struggle of Tunisian independent NGOs and journalists that "helped lift part of the veil which hides the Tunisian regime’s practices which stifle liberties."

Such pressure was reported to have led the government to temporarily lift blocking of local and international rights groups and newspapers and magazines particularly when Tunisia hosted international meetings and visitors.

Different independent editors whose websites are posted outside the country said the reasons why the internet is so tightly controlled by ISPs close to the regime, including President Ben Ali’s daughter and the state-run Tunisian Internet Agency, are purely political.

Editors of online magazines resorted to the Internet because of the absence of independent journalism and because the government has failed so far to stifle freedom of expression completely on the Internet thanks to proxies and pressure from the international community.

Sihem Ben Sedrine, Naziha Rejiba, co-editors of Kalima and Nadia Omrane, editor of Alternatives Citoyenne (Citizens’ Alternatives), used to contribute to independent papers like Ar Rai (The Opinion), Le Phare (The Lighthouse), and Le Maghreb, which were forced by the government to close down several years ago.

According to the Tunisian Human Rights League, the tight police surveillance of the Internet and the harassment and imprisonment of Zouhair Yahyaoui and Abdallah Zouari has had a negative impact on the rate of Internet use.

"In Latin America the rate is 1,000 Internet users per 10,000 inhabitants and in South and East Asia it is 2,000 per 10,000 inhabitants. In Tunisia, this rate is 750 per 10,000 inhabitants," said the LTDH adding that most Internet users in Tunisia work for the government and personal accounts amount to only 7.5% of Internet users. The LTDH also reported that there are 0.3 Internet cafes per 10,000 inhabitants in Tunisia, while in neighboring Algeria there are 4 times as many, i.e.: 1.3 Internet cafes per 10,000 inhabitants.

The Tunisian government has its own statistics: "900,000 Internet users; 12 ISPs, including 5 belonging to the private sector; 310 Internet cafes at the end of 2004."
http://campaigns.ifex.org/tmg/blocking.html