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.
[1] Article 8 of the Tunisian Constitution states "the liberties of opinion, expression, the press, publication, assembly, and association are guaranteed and exercised within the conditions defined by the law."
Frequently banned authors include Mohamed Talbi, Hamma Hammami, Sihem Bensedrine, Moncef Marzouki, and Taoufik Ben Brik.
In order to avoid accusations of censorship, Ben Ali's regime authorized only a very limited number of editions of foreign newspapers.
[2] The state exercises a monopoly on domestic television transmissions, although satellite dishes are popular and offer access to foreign broadcasts.
Cyber dissidents including pro-democracy lawyer Mohammed Abbou were jailed by the Tunisian government for their online activities.
[11] Following the resignation of President Ben Ali in the 2011 Tunisian Revolution, press reports indicated that books banned under the previous regime, including La régente de Carthage and L'assassinat de Salah Ben Youssef, had appeared in bookstores and were openly circulating.
[15] In March, Ghazi Beji and Jabeur Mejri were sentenced to seven and a half years' imprisonment for uploading a text to Facebook criticizing Mohammad and including a naked caricature of him.
[16] Mentally ill 25-year-old Ramzi Abcha was sentenced to four years' imprisonment in April after he desecrated Korans in several mosques.
She filed a request with the government to publish the magazine Kalima in 1999 and did not receive a response.2 In June 2001 Bensedrine was arrested and imprisoned for six weeks for making comments critical of the judiciary on a private London television station; she was released in August.3 In January 2004 she was assaulted by alleged plainclothes police and had her third attempt to register Kalima rejected.4 The Index on Censorship reported in mid-2005 that Bensedrine had become "the target of a viciously obscene campaign of hate" in the pro-government media, which it attributes to pressure from the government.
These and similar notions, widely regarded abroad as spurious and insulting, have led censorship experts such as Rohan Jayasekera to hail Bensedrine as "a friend to media freedom.
Hammami's wife, Radhia Nasraoui, a human rights lawyer and also an outspoken opponent of President Ben Ali, went on a 57-day hunger strike in late 2003 to protest official surveillance of her home and communications.8 Abdallah Zouari is a journalist (formerly of Al-Fajr) who was sentenced to eleven years in prison in 1991 for membership in an illegal organisation.
Zouhair Yahyaoui, alias Ettounsi, founded and edited one of the first open discussion forums on the internet the satirical website TUNeZINE (http://www.tunezine.com Archived 2022-01-19 at the Wayback Machine).
This 'Zine' (a play on words connecting the genre to the President) drew participants from across the political spectrum discussing women's issues, human rights, economic problems, freedom of expression as well as religion.