tunisia: jailed e-zine activist honoured

IFEX - News from the international freedom of expression community
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PRESS RELEASE/UPDATE - INTERNATIONAL

3 April 2003

Cuban journalist, Tunisian e-zine writer to receive 2003 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith
Freedom to Write Awards

SOURCE: PEN American Center, New York City

**Updates IFEX alerts on the Arévalo Padrón case of 21 November, 23 August, 15
May and 23 January 2002, and others; updates alerts on the Yahyaoui case of 3
February and 17 January 2003, 1 October, 21, 20 and 6 June 2002**

(PEN/IFEX) - The following is a 2 April 2003 PEN American Center press release:

Cuban Journalist, Tunisian e-zine Writer to Receive 2003 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith
Freedom to Write Awards

New York, New York, April 2, 2003: PEN American Center today named Bernardo
Arévalo Padrón, an independent journalist serving a 6-year prison term for
calling attention to rights violations in Cuba, and Zouhair Yahyaoui, a Tunisian
Internet activist whose popular electronic magazine earned him a 2-year prison
term, as recipients of its 2003 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Awards.
The awards, which honor international literary figures who have been persecuted
or imprisoned for exercising or defending the right to freedom of expression,
will be presented at PEN's Annual Gala on April 22, 2003 at the Pierre Hotel in
New York City.

Distinguished writer, historian, and PEN member Barbara Goldsmith underwrites
the two awards at $20,000 per year. Candidates are nominated by International
PEN and any of its 132 constituent PEN Centers around the world and screened by
PEN American Center and an Advisory Board comprised of some of the most
distinguished experts in the field. The Advisory Board for the PEN/Barbara
Goldsmith Freedom to Write Awards includes Carroll Bogert, Communications
Director of Human Rights Watch; Ann Cooper, Executive Director of the Committee
to Protect Journalists; Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation;
Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, Vice President of International PEN; and Aryeh Neier,
President of the Open Society Institute.

On August 14, 1997, State Security agents arrested independent journalist
Bernardo Arévalo Padrón in Aguada de Pasajeros, Cuba. Three days later, he was
released pending trial for defamation. The basis for the charge has never been
publicly disclosed. However, reports indicate that he was charged either for
alleging in interviews on Miami radio that military helicopters were
transporting fresh meat to Communist Party officials in Havana while Cuban
farmers went hungry, or for accusing the government of ignoring agreements it
signed during the 1996 Ibero-American summit to respect parliamentary democracy,
basic freedoms and human rights. A court sentenced him to six years'
imprisonment. The judgment was confirmed on appeal.

Mr. Arévalo Padrón is the founder of Linea Sur Press, an independent news agency
based in Cienfuegos. He created the agency with the goal of making the Cuban
public aware of the ways in which their government was violating their
fundamental rights. He has vowed to continue his journalistic work even behind
bars by reporting news of prison conditions.

Since he entered prison, Bernardo Arévalo Padrón has been transferred repeatedly
from one labor camp to another, where tasks include weeding and cutting
sugarcane. In March of 2002, Mr. Arévalo Padrón released information on prison
conditions in the center where he was being held. He was instantly deprived of
his wife's visits and the following month prison authorities turned down his
fourth request to be released on parole. According to colleagues, prison
authorities told Mr. Arévalo Padrón that if he did not stop sending bulletins
from jail, family visits for all of the prisoners in his prison unit would
cease. They have also reportedly encouraged other prisoners to harass "the
counter-revolutionary" on grounds that he is harming the prison's reputation and
grading.

On April 1, 2001, his application for conditional leave, for which all Cuban
prisoners become eligible on serving half their sentence, was turned down by the
authorities on the grounds that he had not been sufficiently "politically
re-educated."

On June 4, 2000, not long after his lively Internet magazine TUNeZINE invited
readers to vote on whether Tunisia was "a republic, a kingdom, a zoo, or a
prison," Zouhair Yahyaoui was arrested at the Tunis cyber café where he worked
by six plainclothes police officers. The officers, who had
neither search nor arrest warrants, escorted him home, confiscated his personal
computer files, and took him into custody. His whereabouts were unknown for five
days. During that time he was reportedly subjected to three sessions of
"suspension," a method of torture in which the victim is
suspended by his arms with his feet barely touching the ground. After the third
session, he revealed his website's access code, allowing the Tunisian
authorities to remove TUNeZINE.com from the Internet.

On June 20, 2002, Mr. Yahyaoui was tried and sentenced to one year in prison for
"propagation of false news" and an additional year and four months for
"non-authorized usage of an Internet connection" and "theft from an employer."
He was re-tried on July 3, 2002. On July 10, his sentence was reduced on appeal
from twenty-eight months to two years.

Zouhair Yahyaoui (whose pen name is "Ettounsi," "the Tunisian") founded
TUNeZINE.com shortly after graduating from college to disseminate information on
the struggle for democracy in Tunisia and publish opposition material. The
e-magazine ran scathing reports of human rights violations in Tunisia, critiques
of the fifteen-year-long regime of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, challenges
to the tourism industry and discussion boards for visitors. What began as a
one-man operation quickly expanded to a committed core of five people, and
TUNeZINE became one of the most popular virtual spaces in Tunisia. Yahyaoui and
his publication reached international prominence in July of 2001, when he
published an open letter from his uncle, a prominent judge, to President Ben
Ali, denouncing complete lack of judicial independence in Tunisia.

Mr. Yahyaoui is currently imprisoned 28 kilometers from Tunis, where his health
is believed to have seriously deteriorated. Meanwhile, his colleague and fiancée
Sophie Elwarda has restarted TUNeZINE as a platform to campaign for his release.

In announcing the awards today in New York, PEN American Center Executive
Director Michael Roberts praised their creativity and sacrifice. "The heroism of
this year's PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award recipients begins in a
shared determination to write about the state of
human rights in their respective countries, but it goes much further," Roberts
said. "Both Bernardo Arévalo Padrón in Cuba and Zouhair Yahyaoui in Tunisia had
to create the means to disseminate the information they gathered, Arévalo Padrón
by founding a news agency independent of
government controls and Yahyaoui by launching a free, popular online magazine.
Their success in circumventing existing restrictions has cost them dearly: they
have become examples of the very limitations on dissent that they set out to
publicize."

Freedom to Write Program Director Larry Siems stressed the importance of this
year's awards in reminding the world of the daily struggle for freedom of
expression in countries outside the current sphere of media coverage. "Even as
our attention is justifiably focused on the human rights and freedom of
expression implications of the war on terrorism and ongoing military operations,
we must remain vigilant elsewhere as well. For example, on the day the U.S.
launched its war on Iraq, the Cuban government rounded up at least a dozen more
independent journalists, in clear violation of their right to freedom of
expression. If history has taught anything, it is that those who would curtail
essential rights are quick to take advantage when they believe the international
community is distracted."

This is the 17th year that the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Awards
have honored international literary figures who have been persecuted or
imprisoned for exercising or defending the right to freedom of expression. The
awards are an extension of PEN's year-round advocacy on
behalf of the more than 1,150 writers and journalists who are currently
threatened or in prison. Thirty-three women and men have received the award
since 1987; 21 of the 25 honorees who were in prison at the time they were
honored were subsequently released.

For further information, contact Larry Siems (x105), Freedom-To-Write Program
Director, PEN American Center at 568 Broadway, Suite 401, New York, NY 10012
U.S.A., tel: +1 212 334 1660, fax: +1 212 334 2181, e-mail: [email protected],
[email protected], Internet: http://www.pen.org/

The information contained in this press release/update is the sole
responsibility of PEN American Center. In citing this material for broadcast or
publication, please credit PEN American Center.
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