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Blogging at the time of dictatorship

Peter Zschunke/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved.For decades before the revolution,
the ruling regime in Tunisia dominated public space, monopolized the media,
confiscated the voices of dissenters, and spent a lot of effort and money to
produce a media narrative in its favor.

To do so the regime strived in
blurring facts, silencing voices and misleading international public opinion by
promoting the fabricated image of ‘The Tunisian Miracle’ at home and abroad. This
image presented Tunisia as a state of law, rights and institutions, where
people enjoyed welfare. In reality, however, unemployment was rampant and
poverty was widespread and tyranny was stiffling people.

To face this policy of systematic
blackout, a number of young Tunisians endeavored to break the silence by
creating new media that would expose the policies of the oppressive state and
highlight the gravity of human rights violations during the reign of General Ben
Ali.

In this context, e-blogging appeared in
Tunisia as a form of protest, making room for free writing and a space for
expression separate from the totalitarian state.

Numerous pioneering blogs and other
sites came into existence and provided a space where opposed opinions were shared.
This broke the media embargo imposed on the people, bringing together human rights
activists, trade unionists, partisan and independent individuals. These blogs
and sites published daring articles and sarcastic cartoons with distinctive content.

Among the electronic platforms that
exposed the regime with their increasing popularity and rich critical content are:
the forum of the National
Council for Liberties, TAKRIZ,
Tunisia
News, TUNeZINE, NAWAAT and others. These sites resisted
despotism peacefully via the internet.

Sami Ben Gharbia, director of the
Nawaat website, said
during his testimony before the Truth and Dignity Commission (March 11, 2017)
that "bloggers have taken a leading
role in politicizing the Tunisian internet and building a counter propaganda
against that of Ben Ali.”

They expressed a political awareness
of a social reality in which there was injustice and violation of rights and
freedoms while mastering the use of digital technology to break the monopoly of
Ben Ali’s system of information.

In their struggle, they took the
moral obligation to protect the personal data of their blog visitors. But it
was through blogs that Ben Ali knew that people were aware of the corruption of
his regime; he consequently took every opportunity to block this blogging
phenomenon and abuse bloggers.

In order to tighten control over the
Internet, a specialized information center (the Tunisian Internet Agency) was
established to monitor the people surfing these networks and to trace their
publications, e-mails and pages on social media.

The Agency blocked many sites it
considered to be against the regime and created others to beautify the image of
the oligarchy. The Foreign Communications Agency contributed to the financing
of e-piracy projects and the recruitment of media defenders for the regime; it also
provided the presidential palace with daily reports on the activities of
opposition sites.

The surveillance agencies used an
army of censors and informers along with sophisticated and cost-effective piracy
programs such as Trojans, virus transmission technologies and sorting content
to disrupt opposition blogs, delete their databases, and prevent users from
accessing them.

Restrictive laws were enacted to
restrict freedom of navigation, electronic publishing and prevent access to
information. Along with these measures the regime tracked bloggers down, arrested
and tortured them as it feared the power of ‘the word’ and its role in raising
people’s awareness and enlightening them.

The long list of those bloggers
include Zouhair
Yahyaoui who was arrested and served a prison sentence because of TUNeZINE,
a critical and sarcastic site. He died in 2005 after not fully recovering from
his time in prison.

Mohamed
Abbou was imprisoned for three years and six months for publishing articles
on the Tunisia News
website about human rights violations in the country.

Judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui was
dismissed because of a letter
he addressed to Ben Ali in which he criticized the deterioration of the
judiciary.

However, these repressive measures
did not successfully silence the voices of bloggers who continued to support the
protest movement and transmit the image of the revolution to the world.

In the time of dictatorship, the
blogger had a digital intellectual and e-activist role to fulfill. Devoting
their lives, time and pen to defend the oppressed, and express the right of
people to think, protest, write and publish.

In their writings these bloggers were
recording the criminal acts of a police state, which the regime strived hard to
hide, beautify or obscure.

Sami Ben Gharbia said he filed a
complaint against the Tunisian Internet Agency (ITA), which is responsible for harming
national memory over a period of ten years, because of its piracy of many
opposition sites at home and abroad.

It is a crime punishable by law and
contrary to Tunisia's agreements in the field of informatics. It is certainly
true that the issue of the harassment of the blogging movement has not been
fully studied and scrutinized yet. It is not known which parties were
responsible for tracking down bloggers and harassing them at the time of the
oppressive regime.

Who issued the blocking orders? Which
parties hacked the protest sites and how much public money did they receive to
do so? What are the components of the Internet police? And how was the secret
code decoded? Who followed the bloggers, located their geographical location
and facilitated political police access to them? 

All these questions remain unanswered.

All those concerned with the Internet
in Tunisia and abroad are expecting the Truth and Dignity Commission, the
Anti-corruption Authority, human rights activists and competent judicial bodies
to answer these pending questions.