Al-Jazeera reports that eight Tunisian opposition members have gone on a hunger strike demanding political freedoms and the release of political prisoners. One source reports that observers from the American and British embassies were there, but no reports yet of any follow up.
Al-Arabiya leads with President Bin Ali's nasty, but all too typical, response that the hunger strikers, and the opposition more widely, lacked patriotism, as evidenced by their actions insulting the country and tarnishing its reputation. He also rejected the report of a special UN human rights rapporteur about the problems of the Tunisian media.
The protests are tied to the UN's World Summit on the Information Society, due to be held in Tunis next month. A bigger travesty could hardly be imagined - Tunisia remains one of the worst places in the world for journalists and political opposition (it would be as if the United States put the regional office of the Middle East Partnership Initiative in Tunis... oh, wait...). The only good that might come of it would be if the opposition and media can seize the chance to put a global spotlight on Bin Ali and the repressive Tunisian government. Judging by this Google News search, that is not exactly happening: no stories from a major Western English language news source... you need al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya for that. But the real test will be in November, when the summit approaches.
Well, he refrained from calling them pawns of the Algerians, so he did pull some punches.
Posted by: collounsbury | October 24, 2005 at 07:17 AM