Civil Society Activists Await April 30 Appeal

(BRUSSELS, April 30, 2001 )
The 28-page report, "A Lawsuit against the Human Rights League, An
Assault on All Rights Activists," also accuses the government of
Tunisia of waging an all-out
campaign against human rights critics,
including heavy-handed police actions to block meetings of
human rights organizations,
physical assaults on men and women activists,
passport confiscations, and interruptions in phone
service.

Human Rights Watch and the Observatory urged the governments of
France, and of all the European Union, to
monitor the appeals court
case against the league that opens April 30, and to pressure the
Tunisian government to stop its
harassment of human rights monitors.

"The Tunisian government's methods are heavy-handed and completely
unsubtle," said Hanny Megally, executive director of the Middle East and
North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. "The outside world has to
make it clear that this kind of repression is unacceptable."

The twenty-four year old LTDH elected an outspoken new steering
committee last October. The new leaders were promptly assailed by
authorities of the ruling party and then hit with a lawsuit. Although
the suit is a private action filed by four LTDH members, it has given
the authorities a handy weapon to use against the League's new
leadership. Police displayed unusual zeal and alacrity in executing a
court injunction against the steering committee, evicting it from the
League's headquarters and then routinely preventing League members from
gathering. The courts also replaced the steering committee with a
temporary administrator and then proceeded to void the League's last
elections. It is the challenge to the latter ruling that opens April 30
before the Tunis Court of Appeals.

The election of a more assertive leadership within the Human Rights
League reflects a growing defiance among members of civil society toward
government repression. This trend is apparent not only in the LTDH but
also in the National Council on Liberties in Tunisia (CNLT), a
two-year-old human rights group that has continued to speak out even
though authorities have denied it legal recognition. In one of the
state's more egregious responses to this renewed activism, CNLT
co-founder and human rights lawyer Nejib Hosni was re-imprisoned in
January on trumped-up charges.

France has recently increased its public criticism of Tunisian rights
abuses and its diplomatic presence at political trials. Human Rights
Watch and the Observatory urged France to continue the diplomatic
pressure, and to use its leadership within the European Union on North
African affairs to press for human rights progress.

"Tunisian officials boast of the Human Rights League as 'a national
institution,'" said Driss el-Yazami, Secretary-General of the
International Federation for Human Rights. "While they may cherish the
existence of the League for public relations reasons, they do much to
impede it when it does its job by sounding the alarm on torture,
political trials, and other all-too-common abuses."

The report, "A Lawsuit against the Human Rights League, An Assault on
All Rights Activists," can be found at
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/tunisia/