Hdi Yahmed was working as a journalist for the Tunisian private weekly "Ralits" until December last year. However, after having published a series of articles on the living conditions Tunisian prisons, he was forced to resign from the paper. Today he is living in exile in France. Hdi told RAP 21 about the events that led up to the escape from his home country.

"Before the publication of the article everything was as usual at the newspaper. We had discussed the feature at the editorial meetings and everybody knew I was working on it. The editors also agreed on the publication of the articles. Once I had finished writing, the articles were read by the rest of the staff. They found them interesting and quite shocking, but nobody said that we should not publish them. Well, there was this one editor who said the feature included some chocking revelations and that it could be sensitive to publish them."

"I was a bit hesitant before the publication, but gathered that there would not be so much noise around the article. I never suspected that the prosecutor would question me about it, and even less that I might lose my job. I was proud of this article that I had worked so hard on. It was the first time in ten years that anybody wrote about the living conditions in Tunisian prisons."

Hdi thinks that once he had written the article it was no longer his responsibility. If the newspaper management had censored it, he could not have done anything. But once it was published he thinks that the newspaper carried the responsibility for it.

When asked whether he could not have written under a pseudonym, Hdi says that a journalist who has self-respect writes under his own name. "And anyway it would probably not had changed anything if I had written under a false name."

Once the article had been published, both Hdi and the general manager of the newspaper were summoned to the prosecutor’s office. It was apparent that Hdi should either leave his position at the newspaper or then the paper would get into trouble. "A few days later the newspaper managers told me that I could no longer work for them."

Hdi was at no point accused for any crime, which is otherwise common procedure for journalists in Tunisia.

"I think they chose not to jail me because of the international attention that imprisoned Tunisian journalists have received recently. I also believe that the authorities tried to make it look like an internal conflict at the newspaper, rather than a conflict between me and the authorities. They merely wanted to show their strength and make an example for other journalists."

Hdi chose to leave Tunisia after he had lost his position at the newspaper. "I want to continue being a journalist. But in Tunisia no newspaper or magazine can employ me. I can no longer practice my profession there. In the same time, working as a journalist is the most important thing to me."

When asked if he would have chosen to publish the article if he had known about the consequences, Hdi answers yes. "I knew that there would sooner or later come a day when I could no longer be a journalist under those circumstances."

For the English summary of Hdi Yahmed’s feature on Tunisian prisons, visit: http://www.wan-press.info/pages/article.php3?id_article=1147