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The demonstration comes after two Tunisian commentators who criticized President Saeid have been sentenced to jail.
A number of hundred Tunisians have marched via the capital Tunis, chanting “down with the dictatorship” as they protested a wave of arrests underneath a presidential decree that critics say is getting used to suppress dissent.
Because the 2011 Tunisian revolution, the nation has been thought-about one of many extra open media environments within the Arab world. However politicians, journalists and unions say press freedom has confronted a severe menace underneath the rule of President Kais Saied, who got here to energy after free elections in 2019.
Two Tunisian media figures got one-year jail sentences in current days after making feedback that authorities deemed important, within the newest prosecutions underneath Saied Decree 54 in 2022, which banned the “dissemination of false information.”
“Down with the decree,” demonstrators shouted on Friday as they marched via Tunis.
“Dictator Kais, it’s your flip now,” they added, referring to the Arab Spring rebellion that toppled longtime chief Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.
Two years after his election, Saied closed the elected parliament and began ruling by decree. He additionally took management of the judiciary, a transfer the opposition known as a coup.
Since then, a lot of his critics have been prosecuted or despatched to jail.
On Wednesday, broadcaster Borhen Bsaies and political commentator Mourad Zeghidi have been each sentenced to at least one yr in jail – six months for spreading “false information” and one other six months for “spreading information containing false data with the goal of defaming others.”
Throughout the listening to, each Bsaies and Zeghidi had defended their “journalistic work”.
Zghidi’s lawyer, Kamel Massoud, condemned Decree 54 as “unconstitutional.”
“When politics enters the courtroom, justice disappears,” he mentioned.
Tunisia has now jailed a complete of six journalists, together with Bsaies and Zeghidi, since Saeid’s Decree 54 got here into impact.
In the meantime, based on the Nationwide Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists, greater than sixty journalists, legal professionals and opposition members have been prosecuted underneath the identical decree.
In Might, police arrested 10 folks, together with journalists, legal professionals and civil society group officers, in what Amnesty Worldwide known as a “profound crackdown” on activists and journalists. Human Rights Watch has known as on Tunisia to respect freedom of expression and civil liberties.
In January, Tunisian authorities additionally arrested journalist Samir Sassi on expenses of “terrorism”.
The arrests have drawn criticism from the United Nations, the European Union and the US, in addition to Tunisia’s former colonial ruler France.
Saied has dismissed the criticism as overseas “interference.”
He additionally rejected accusations of authoritarian rule and mentioned his strikes have been geared toward ending years of “chaos and corruption” within the nation.
‘Down with dictatorship’: Tunisians protest towards authorities crackdown on media | Media information
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