Slim Bagga, the former editor of Tunisia’s opposition monthly, L’Audace, fled his country for France in 1992. However, the passage of time does not stop him receiving death threats as recently as December last year, over his investigations and opinions on government corruption in his native Tunisia. Following last year’s elections, the Tunisian government continues to harass, arrest and censor journalists who dare to speak out against it, making Tunisia a country of low rank on the world press freedom index. Slim Bagga’s editorial explores why the people of Tunisia should demand a free press. He writes exclusively for WAN-IFRA, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers.

It is up to the Tunisians to secure freedom for their press!

Some years ago, a newspaper in Dakar, Senegal, was seized by the authorities. In a unique gesture of courage, commitment and solidarity, acting as a single voice to protest this act of censorship and display their disapproval of such a suppression of free speech, on the following day all newspapers published the banned newspaper’s editorial.

For nearly 22 years, and despite the level of political maturity they have attained, Tunisians have lived with a "harmonised" press that brings the same front page headlines and publishes articles showering praise on the government and its laws, initiatives and decisions. This press, which calls to mind a sad era and the famous Soviet newspaper Pravda, is completely out of step with and unworthy of today’s Tunisia and the Tunisian people.

But the freedom to inform and to be correctly informed is not a given. Like all liberties, it is won and wrested by hard-fought struggle. More than ever before, Tunisians must organise and demand a press that is pluralistic, free, and accountable, that informs them openly about their daily lives and the running of their country by a government and its officials who are more inclined to conceal information than allow its free circulation and elaboration.

It is no exaggeration to say that, in the developed world, the health of a country’s democracy is gauged by the level of freedom enjoyed by the press in that country. Consequently, the commitment of civil society and the entire Tunisian society every day to push back the barriers of censorship and suppression of information is a vital step towards establishing good governance in the short term as well as genuine democracy, free from all the trappings of authoritarionism and abuses inherent in government, in the medium and long terms.

In this connection, it is perhaps appropriate for the people of Tunisia to recall what Montesquieu stated more than two hundred years ago: "When society becomes passive, it is ripe for despotism"...

Slim Bagga.