‘Down with the dictatorship’: hundreds protest Tunisia journalists’ arrests

Tunis, Tunisia — AFP

Several hundred Tunisians marched through the capital chanting “down with the dictatorship” as they protested a spate of arrests under a presidential decree critics say is being used to stifle dissent.

Two Tunisian media figures received one-year jail sentences earlier on Wednesday after making comments the authorities deemed critical, in the latest prosecutions under Decree 54, a 2022 ban on “spreading false news”.

“Down with the decree,” the Tunis marchers shouted. “Dictator Kais (Saied), it’s your turn now,” they added, in allusion to the Arab Spring uprising which toppled longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

Broadcaster Borhen Bssais and political commentator Mourad Zeghidi were both jailed for a year on Wednesday, six months for spreading “false news” and a further six months for “spreading news that includes false information with the aim of defaming others”.

Zeghidi’s lawyer, Kamel Massoud, condemned Decree 54 as “unconstitutional”.

“When politics enters the courtroom, justice leaves,” he said.

Since Decree 54 came into force, more than 60 journalists, lawyers and opposition figures have been prosecuted, according to the National Union of Tunisian Journalists.

The arrests have drawn criticism from the United Nations, the European Union and the United States, as well as Tunisia’s former colonial ruler France.

But Saied, who seized sweeping powers in 2021 and has stifled all opposition and criticism, dismissed all dissent as foreign “interference.”