Interview by WPP Staff
This month, WPP staff interviewed Arbia Jebali and Sarah Chamekh from Free Sight Association in Tunisia about their work; how civil society space has changed over the years; which challenges they are facing now; and how civil society in Tunisia is organizing itself to overcome those challenges. Free Sight Association is a Tunisian civil society organization created in 2011, using different arts and creativity. Its aims are to defend human rights; to spread a culture of dialogue, peace and citizenship; and to encourage active participation so that the democratic transition process can succeed. During its 6 years of activism, Free Sight Association, with more than 1,000 members from all Tunisian governorates, and 36 volunteers and workers, implemented 21 projects with women and youth in Tunisia, as well as the Euro-Mediterranean and MENA region. Its projects focus on topics including youth rights, women rights, democracy, sustainable development, and prevention from violent extremism. This had been facilitated by its strong network amongst local associations, as well as partnerships with other national, regional and international organizations. An important part of the work focuses on maintaining communication with the Tunisian government and Parliament to propose, negotiate, and be consulted on different topics related to its objectives.
In Tunisia a new law is being proposed in Parliament by the unions of the security forces that would greatly increase the powers of the police in our society. In addition to having grave impacts for the community as a whole, by granting security forces a carte blanche to use unnecessary lethal force, the bill also would also have very dangerous consequences for civil society in Tunisia fighting for human rights. According to Amnesty International: “the bill also includes vague provisions that could criminalize legitimate criticism of the security forces including for human rights abuses. Article 12 of the bill criminalizes the “denigration” of police and other security forces with the aim of “harming public order”, making it punishable with a penalty of up to two years in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dinars. Articles 5 and 6 of the bill provide for up to 10 years in prison and a 50,000 dinar fine for those who disclose or publish “national security secrets”. This is defined as “any information, data and documents related to national security”, an overly broad definition which could be used to imprison those revealing information about human rights violations. No protection from prosecution is provided for whistleblowers or journalists”.[1]
The bill would allow them to act with lethal force without formal orders or instruction in the case of manifestations and protests. They want to be able to act on their own, and use guns if they need to. There are no judgments or laws in place that can address the misuse of this law or of their powers, so they can do whatever they want without being controlled or held accountable.[2]
They wanted to pass the bill without any fuss. The security forces and the Parliament used the argument that this law will help them to protect us better, but actually it does the opposite. After all we have struggled to achieve during the revolution, this is a threat to us. Let’s not forget: People went to the streets to make sure they could be part of the country’s decision-making processes. This law will shrink the space that we fought to gain, and will put us in danger. This law inhibits freedom of expression; and considers civil society organizations, journalists and citizens for human rights as dangerous for society.
There is now a strong civil society solidarity movement in place to stop the Parliamentary approval process around this law. Civil society organizations and individual activists have come together and created a committee to monitor and address what is happening. Because of the strong civil society pressure, this has also been getting coverage from the media. The latter is really important, because ordinary people often do not see the risks behind this law. With these initiatives, we are trying to explain to the public why and how this law is dangerous for us. Civil society has already organized one manifestation in the framework of the campaign facing this law and there is a plan for more manifestations in the coming weeks. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also did a lot of work on this, and supported us in this.
As a result, the Parliament took the law back for review, but we do not know yet how they will modify it. We asked them to cancel the law, not to modify it. So the work is not yet done.
As I mentioned, this security sector law tries to transform our situation back to how it was under the old regime. The media, being backed by the government, also plays a role in delegitimizing civil society, for example by accusing civil society and organizations like Human Rights Watch that they are defending terrorists. They accuse us of this because we are against the death penalty and work to stop executions, and speak out about the need for just and fair court processes. We believe that everything should be done based on the law; we are against torture in jails. However, often the media frames this as if we are defending terrorists and trying to protect them. The media also discredits CSOs by stating they receive foreign funding and implement foreign agendas, and as such are dangerous and not credible.
According to us, the main change in our situation was that before the revolution we had no civil society at all, except for a few organizations that were also monitored and targeted by the old regime. Since the revolution, we are able to create associations, coalitions, study centers and carry out all kinds of activities that were not possible before. These structures are important for the democratic transition in Tunisia, because it means that civil society can be engaged in changing the country’s situation for the better. After all, our revolution was about human rights, social, civic and political rights.
Yet in these six years since the revolution, we are also seeing a rise in violent extremism (VE) and responses to it. We currently have a government in place that is run by a very conservative Islamic party, which has a lot of impact on our situation. With this new government, new charities are being set up that are getting funding but are not carrying out any activities. Some of them are being accused of financing terrorist groups[3].
That makes it difficult for us to do our work, because it puts pressure on the entire civil society. It makes it difficult for us to know whom we are working with, and everyone becomes suspicious. After the revolution, many groups started to engage in civil society work, yet at the same time organizations started appearing that we do not trust. We need to raise awareness about this phenomenon and work to address it.
More than 3,000 young Tunisians have gone to Syria to fight Assad and to Libya, according to the official declaration of the government. Our organization is working on Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) in order to tackle this phenomenon, yet the same time we are always defending ourselves as an organization, and our activities.
We have to report to the government all the time about our activities. Before welcoming a visitor or partner or participant, we have to go to the police office and let them know who is coming. We have to go through so many procedures. For every project, we need to send a summary of the project, information about the duration and the donor, and we should publish all of that in the newspaper for every project, as well as on our websites. This takes so much time. It is a fulltime job just showing that we are legitimate and not terrorists.
When it comes to banking, we also notice changes. Receiving transfers sometimes takes a lot of time, it can take up to one month or longer. It happened to us twice that when we asked for an explanation for the delay, we were told it concerned verification due to countering terrorism financing (CTF) regulations. Banks also sometimes keep the money without contacting civil society. That means you end up waiting for a long time. We regularly end up having to go back and forth to deliver al the information banks want from our organization. They ask us what our activities are, and when we say that the funding is for a training they ask us about what. When we explain it concerns a training for human rights, we need to explain everything. They usually ask us if we are a charity association, as these are seen as very dangerous over here. Banks never give you complete answers when you ask them what exactly they need from you. Only if you are super persistent.
This impacts our work, because we are working according to a planning schedule that not only includes us, but also our partners, our beneficiaries and our community. We have many commitments, and because of all the bureaucracy and control on multiple fronts, we sometimes cannot meet them. This in turn impacts our credibility…
At the same time as we are doing everything to show our legitimacy, during the past 2.5 years the current government has invited radical religious leaders to teach youth about religion, especially in marginalized neighborhoods. A lot has changed in the Tunisian society because of this.
We know about this because these meetings were public. I remember listening to some of the speeches, and what I heard was dangerous. They spoke about how parents should stop their daughters from going out, how the girls should wait for their “prince charming” to come and get them, that parents need to have more control over their girls and not let them wear whatever they want. No one from the government tries to stop them. They gained a lot of followers. To me, looking at how free they felt to take about these matters in public, that worries me, also because some of these religious leaders are actually encouraging young people to go to Syria to fight.
We are the ones working on the ground to counter and prevent violent extremism. We know how sensitive this work is, and how best to reach those in our communities. We need to be listened to by our government and Parliament. We need them to respect our constitution, because it contains provisions to protect our freedoms and our rights. Until now, these freedoms and rights have not been very well respected. We need to fix the relations between civil society, government and the media. We need more trust between civil society, government, the citizens and the security forces, because the trust gap is contributing to the shrinking of civil society space.
[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/07/tunisia-proposed-bill-could-give-security-forces-carte-blanche-to-use-unnecessary-lethal-force/
Arbia Jebali is the president and founder of Free Sight Association. She is currently also a master’s student in international relations (Tunis) and in political philosophy (Paris). She is a human rights activist, international dialogue facilitator and trainer in: conflict resolution, women rights, gender approach, advocacy mechanisms, and theory of change. She has been a speaker in National, Regional, and International conferences on Youth rights, Women rights, Prevention from radicalization and violent extremism. She also loves to write poetry and paint.
Sarah Chamekh is a project assistant in Free Sight Association and mentor of Medenine in the project “Tunisian Leaders for Human Security” aiming to build resilience against radicalization and violent extremism. She is currently a student in English literature and civilization. Sarah is a human rights activist and trainer in nonviolent communication and theory of change. She is a painter and a theatre actor in her free time.
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