Groups decry Tunisia hosting U.N. summit

By Nick Wadhams, Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS — As the Internet's influence grows, so too does resistance from nations wary of giving their citizens the tools to voice their opinions and mine the online mother lode of knowledge.
That issue will be center stage during a U.N. technology summit this week, the urgency brought home by the fact that the event is taking place in Tunisia, which activists call one of the world's worst Internet censors.

Already, rights watchdogs say, both Tunisian and foreign reporters on hand for the summit have been harassed and beaten. Reporters Without Borders says its secretary-general, Robert Menard, has been banned from attending.

These groups — including a coalition of 14 freedom of expression organizations — argue that such practices makes Tunisia unfit to host an event whose goals include promoting free expression and bringing Internet access to as much of the world as possible.

The United Nations, however, claims the summit will shine a spotlight on Tunisia's repressive tactics — and possibly lead it to reform.

"On the one hand, these are important, critical issues for the future of democracy in the world, and on the other, they're thorny and unpleasant to talk about," said John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. "It's a massive brewing dispute."

The debate over who controls the Internet — an issue raised in the summit's first half in Geneva two years ago — will be a central sticking point for the estimated 12,000-15,000 delegates gathering in Tunis on Wednesday for the three-day World Summit on the Information Society. Organizers expect 40 and 50 world leaders to attend, along with Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Yet some fear that what is being billed as a "summit of solutions" could also lead to new problems — by creating new threats for governments that have long known the Internet to be a powerful tool in the hands of dissidents and ordinary people hungry for knowledge beyond what the government gives them.

In some repressive nations, blogs have become the samizdat of the digital age, and governments have sought to suppress them by either monitoring websites or cutting access to them.

China, Iran, Syria and Uzbekistan are among nations known to target Internet dissent.

A group called the Tunisia Monitoring Group, which has focused on abuses in the north African nation, has cited the case of a lawyer and rights activist named Mohamed Abbou, who was jailed in April after he wrote an online article a year ago equating Tunisia's abuse of political prisoners with American treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Ambassador David Gross, the U.S. State Department's top official on Internet policy, says Washington opposes ceding control over the worldwide network's addressing system in part because multi-country oversight could lead to further restrictions on the free flow of information online.

"Those countries that use firewalls or otherwise restrict the ability of their citizens to obtain access to information are hurting themselves, especially when it comes to their ability to compete economically," said Gross.

Indeed, fears of a crackdown have led some civil society groups who plan to hold their own summit on the margins of the gathering to adopt an air of secrecy. Several have refused to say where they will meet or hold their news conferences for fear of a government crackdown.

On Sunday, a reporter with the French daily Liberation, Christophe Boltanski, was stabbed and kicked — but not seriously hurt — outside his hotel in Tunis. Boltanski had been investigating the recent beating of human rights activists in the country.

And on Monday, police in Tunisia manhandled local and foreign activists after banning them from meeting ahead of the summit, Human Right Watch said. Eric Goldstein, a representative of the New York-based organization, said he was in a group of more than a dozen activists who were shoved away from the planned meeting site by plainclothes police.

The Tunisia Monitoring Group has highlighted the cases of seven men now on a hunger strike in Tunisia and estimates the country has jailed about 500 people for expressing opinions.

Its leader wrote a letter to Annan questioning whether Tunisia was the right place for the summit. Annan responded by saying that Tunisia was chosen by the 46 nations that make up the council of the International Telecommunication Union.

Annan said the choice offered an opportunity for Tunisia's government to address rights concerns.

He may not be wholly wrong. Tunisia has reportedly eased its crackdown on the media in recent days, though it won't be clear until after the summit whether the changes last.

On Monday, Annan met with Tunisia's president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and reiterated the importance of protecting freedom of speech, U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.

Yet nations have been sufficiently concerned to voice their fears. During a preparatory meeting in September, Canada read a joint statement signed by the 25-nation European Union and 11 other countries that insisted Tunisia ensure free speech during the summit.

Nouredine Kacem, a first secretary at Tunisia's U.N. mission in New York, played down the protests about his country's human rights record.

"Everywhere you go you have a protest, the people are not happy everywhere," Kacem said. "In Tunisia, we try to make the best of it, we are working very hard in human rights, the economy and so on we are doing much better than other countries."