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Taoufik Ben Brik (born 1960 in Jerissa) is a Tunisian journalist.
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Taoufik Ben Brik (born 1960 in Jerissa) is a Tunisian journalist.
Brik is a prominent critic of the former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and an outspoken critic of censorship in the Middle East. He has published numerous articles, and collections of articles as books, abroad that describe the difficult economic conditions in the country, political corruption, and lack of free speech. In 2000, he was accused of publishing false information and other spurious charges, [1] and went on a hunger strike in protest. [2] He has been periodically detained in Tunisia and prevented from travelling, and his family has also been harassed as a way to intimidate him and prevent him from speaking out against the regime. [3]
He was incarcerated on October 29, 2009 on trumped-up charges of assaulting a citizen after a traffic incident. The Court of Appeal upheld a sentence of nine years on 3 January 2010 in a trial that "confirmed the complete absence of independence of the Tunisian legal system" according to the defendant's French lawyer, William Bourdon. [4]
On April 27, 2010, he was released from prison after serving 6 months. [5] [6] He attended World Press Freedom Day in Paris on May 3, 2010, at the Reporters Without Borders offices and told journalists that he would stand for the presidency of Tunisia in 2014, explaining that President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali would be past the age set in the Constitution of Tunisia. [7] After the 2011 Tunisian Revolution which ousted Ben Ali, Ben Brik declared his candidacy in the upcoming 2011 Tunisian presidential election. [8]
His books include:
The politics of Tunisia takes place within the framework of a unitary semi-presidential representative democratic republic, with a President serving as head of state, Prime Minister as head of government, a unicameral legislature and a court system influenced by French civil law. Between 1956 and 2011, Tunisia operated as a de facto one-party state, with politics dominated by the secular Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) under former Presidents Habib Bourguiba and then Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. However, in 2011 a national uprising led to the ousting of the President and the dismantling of the RCD, paving the way for a multi-party democracy. October 2014 saw the first democratic parliamentary elections since the 2011 revolution, resulting in a win by the secularist Nidaa Tounes party with 85 seats in the 217-member assembly.
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, commonly known as Ben Ali or Ezzine, was a Tunisian politician who served as the 2nd president of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. In that year, during the Tunisian revolution, he fled to Saudi Arabia.
Mohamed Ghannouchi is a Tunisian politician who was Prime Minister of Tunisia from 1999 to 2011. Regarded as a technocrat, Ghannouchi was a long-standing figure in the Tunisian government under President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. He also served as the President of Tunisia from 14 January 2011 to 15 January 2011, holding the powers and duties of the office nominally for the absent President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had fled the country due to the 2011 revolution. On 15 January 2011 the presidency was declared vacant by the Constitutional Court and Ben Ali's term was officially terminated, leading to Speaker of Parliament Fouad Mebazaa taking office as Acting President. Ghannouchi stayed on as Prime Minister for six more weeks after Ben Ali's overthrow before himself resigning.
Internet censorship in Tunisia significantly decreased in January 2011, following the ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, as the new acting government removed filters on social networking sites such as YouTube.
Censorship in Tunisia has been an issue since the country gained independence in 1956. Though considered relatively mild under President Habib Bourguiba (1957–1987), censorship and other forms of repression became common under his successor, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Ben Ali was listed as one of the "10 Worst Enemies of the Press" by the Committee to Protect Journalists starting in 1998. Reporters Without Borders named Ben Ali as a leading "Predator of Press Freedom". However, the Tunisia Monitoring Group reports that the situation with respect to censorship has improved dramatically since the overthrow of Ben Ali in early 2011.
The Internet in Tunisia played an important role in the dramatic events of the Arab Spring which began in Tunisia. The ouster of previous President of Tunisia Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ushered in more open access and use of the Internet. Political leaders in Tunisia are making use of social media to communicate with the electorate. Restructuring the Tunisian Internet Agency under the auspices of the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies is one of the items that the transition government is working on.
General elections were held in Tunisia on 25 October 2009. Results released on 26 October 2009 indicated a substantial victory for incumbent President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who won the reelection for a fifth five-year term, and the governing Constitutional Democratic Rally. It was the last election contested under the Ben Ali regime, prior to the Tunisian Revolution.
Zouhair Yahyaoui was the first cyber-dissident to be pursued and condemned in Tunisia, a country that is often rated at the top of lists of Internet policing by independent third-party sources such as the OpenNet Initiative. He was the nephew of the judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui, who was also a vocal critic of the Tunisian regime and its lack of respect for judiciary processes. His cousin Amira Yahyaoui founded the NGO Al Bawsala.
Sakher El Materi is a Tunisian businessman. He is the son-in-law of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was President of Tunisia until 2011. In 2010, Materi's company Princesse El-Materi Holdings was operating in six industry sectors: News and Media, Banking and Financial Services, Automotive, Shipping and Cruises, Real Estate and Agriculture. A member of the ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally, he was elected as a Member of the Chamber of Deputies of Tunisia for the constituency of Tunis on 25 October 2009. He was struck off by the party after the 2011 Tunisian Revolution. After the revolution El Materi fled the country and went to the Seychelles.
Leïla Ben Ali is the widow of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was President of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. She married Ben Ali in 1992.
Nawaat is an independent collective blog co-founded by Tunisians Sami Ben Gharbia, Sufian Guerfali and Riadh Guerfali in 2004, with Malek Khadraoui joining the organization in 2006. The goal of Nawaat's founders was to provide a public platform for Tunisian dissident voices and debates. Nawaat aggregates articles, visual media, and other data from a variety of sources to provide a forum for citizen journalists to express their opinions on current events. The site does not receive any donations from political parties. During the events leading to the Tunisian Revolution of 2011, Nawaat advised Internet users in Tunisia and other Arab nations about the dangers of being identified online and offered advice about circumventing censorship. Nawaat is an Arabic word meaning core. Nawaat has received numerous awards from international media organizations in the wake of the Arab Spring wave of revolutions throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
Riadh Guerfali, also known by the pseudonym Astrubal, is a Tunisian lawyer and human rights activist. He is best known for being a manager of the website Nawaat, which itself became a platform for organizing protesters during the Tunisian revolution.
The 1987 Tunisian coup d'état involved the bloodless ousting of the aging President of Tunisia Habib Bourguiba on 7 November 1987, and his replacement as President by his recently appointed Prime Minister, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The action was justified by reference to Bourguiba's failing health and Article 57 of the country's constitution. Reports later surfaced to indicate that the Italian intelligence services had been involved in planning it.
Socialism in Tunisia or Tunisian socialism is a political philosophy that is shared by various political parties of the country. It has played a role in the country's history from the time of the Tunisian independence movement against France up through the Tunisian Revolution to the present day.
Sami Fehri is a Tunisian entrepreneur, producer and director. He is also the founder of the private Tunisian channel “Ettounsiya TV” and the general director of the private production Company Cactus Production.
Ahlem Belhadj is a Tunisian psychiatrist and women's rights campaigner. Serving at various times as president, chair and director of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (ATFD), Belhadj campaigns for better treatment of women in Tunisia. She successfully fought for the right of women and children to apply for passports without permission of their husband/father. Belhadj led a march of thousands of women against President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali during the 2011 Tunisian Revolution. She is the 2012 winner of the Simone de Beauvoir Prize and placed 18th on Foreign Policy's 2012 list of global thinkers.
Ali Ben Salem or Ali Kchouk, born in 1931 in Bizerte, is a Tunisian human rights activist and anti-colonialist. He is an opponent of the regimes of Presidents Habib Bourguiba and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Ali Ben Salem is considered the oldest human rights activist in Tunisia. While he was the president of the Bizertine section of the Tunisian Human Rights League. He co-founded the National Council for Freedoms and the Association against Torture in Tunisia.
Béchir Ben Yahmed was a Tunisian-French journalist. He founded the weekly news magazine Jeune Afrique and served as its CEO. He also founded the newspaper La Revue.
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