Press TV: Delegation investigates US role in Tunisia

A report issued by a group of international lawyers and academics who recently visited Tunisia warns that the U.S. and other Western governments must respect Tunisian sovereignty and not interfere in the country’s path to democracy. Commondreams.org

National Lawyers Guild attorney Thomas Nelson told Press TV’s U.S. Desk on Wednesday that the delegation was formed mostly because “after the Tunisian revolution broke out, it became clear that there were a lot of pressure being applied” to the country.

Nelson said the National Lawyers Guild was asked “to send a delegation to Tunisia to examine the role of the United States and other Western countries both in the pre-revolution times and to take a look at the revolution itself”.

He told the U.S. Desk that the National Lawyers Guild wanted “to try and monitor what the United States and other Western countries do in Tunisia and whether those actions will further or hinder the ongoing development of the revolution.”

Nelson said the National Lawyers Guild, founded in 1937, comprises of “a group of progressive attorneys in the United States that gets involved in these kinds of international matters.”

From March 12 to 19, 2011, a delegation — which included members of the U.S.-based National Lawyers Guild as well as attorneys from the UK and Turkey — visited Tunisia at the invitation of the Tunisian National Bar Association. Commondreams.org

RS/SM/KA

Human rights delegation investigates Western complicity in crimes of Ben Ali regime

This article was published first on Mondoweiss.

by CORINNA MULLIN AND AZADEH SHAHSHAHANI on JUNE 22, 2011

Mohammed Bouazizi’s desperate act of self-immolation on 17 December 2010 brought down the corrupt and brutal Tunisian despot, Ben Ali, and unwittingly sparked the conflagration that today is still spreading throughout North Africa and the Middle East. As in Tunisia, elsewhere in the region people are bravely tearing down the walls of fear so carefully erected over the years by kelptocratic regimes, often with the support of Western governments.

Though the dramatic events of the last few months have provided much cause for hope in Tunisia, many obstacles remain along the path to constructing a new polity capable of addressing not only Tunisians’ political and individual grievances, but their socio-economic and collective grievances as well.

Much of the attention on the causes of the revolution have focused on longstanding structural issues, including the government’s distorted budget priorities, with too much money invested in repressive security apparatuses and too little in infrastructure and social goods such as healthcare, education, training, job creation, etc. There were also the restrictive labour policies, suffocated public sphere, distortive wealth concentration, and the developmental gap between coastal areas and the interior.

Many Tunisians, especially those on the receiving end of Tunisia’s ‘justice’ system, including trade unionists, leftists, and, in  particular over the last ten years, those with Islamist leanings, expressed anger about the lack of due process, absence of the rule of law, widespread use of torture, and generally dismal prison conditions in Tunisia.

Often overlooked in the western press have been the collective, or one could say nationalist, grievances of the Tunisian people, expressed as frustration at Tunisia’s lack of real sovereignty in a global order enforced by international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, and under the guise of ‘economic modernization’, ‘democratization’, and, most recently, and perhaps for Tunisians most damaging, the ‘war on terror’.

It was to study these latter grievances that from March 12 to 19, 2011, we joined a group of lawyers, human rights activists, and academics, based in the US, UK and Turkey to visit Tunisia at the invitation of the Tunisian National Bar Association. The report that came out of this visit, ‘Promises and Challenges:  The Tunisian Revolution of 2010-2011,’ discusses Tunisia’s history under the disgraced Ben Ali regime and the conditions and events which led to its downfall in January 2011. In particular, the delegation was interested in understanding the role of the US and EU states in supporting the Ben Ali regime, despite knowledge of its numerous and persistent human rights violations.

Our delegation met with various organizations and individuals including those that had been on the receiving end of Ben Ali’s most brutal and undemocratic policies and practices, those that had been instrumental in contesting and resisting the gross human rights violations of the ancien regime, as well as those, including many from the former two categories, that had been instrumental in bringing down the Ben Ali government. These included heads of NGOs, labour leaders, leaders of oppositional political parties, journalists and bloggers, as well as many former political prisoners and torture victims of the deposed regime.

One grievance that was expressed repeatedly by these various political actors was the perception that western governments had been complicit in the crimes committed by the Ben Ali regime, through their provision over the years of copious amounts of diplomatic, military, and economic support, in particular in the past ten years, in the context of the ‘war on terror’. Not only did many feel that western governments had too often turned a blind eye to the depravities of their Tunisian allies in order to secure their own economic and geo-strategic interests in the region, but, even worse, many felt some of Ben Ali’s most heinous crimes were committed at the behest of these governments.

Tunisia was among several Middle East and North African states that declared its support for the ‘war on terror’ and offered substantial intelligence and strategic cooperation shortly after George W. Bush’s infamous speech of 20 September 2001, in which he warned:  ‘Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbour or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.’

In return for its cooperation in the ‘war on terror’, the US was willing to overlook the well-documented human rights violations of the Ben Ali regime, and indeed, political repression actually increased during this period.

In addition to increased security and intelligence cooperation, many of the lawyers, activists, and former political prisoners we met asserted their belief that the 2003 Anti-Terrorism Law was enacted to curry favour with the US.  Although it is unclear what precise role the US played in the wording or timing of the legislation, it is clear the Bush Administration was happy with its passage. The US State Department called it ‘a comprehensive law to “support the international effort to combat terrorism and money laundering.”’

Yet critics, both domestic and international, claimed that the law heavily violated Tunisians’ civil liberties. According to a December 2010 Report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, the Tunisian legislation is based on a definition of terrorism that ‘is vague and broad, hence deviating from the principle of legality and allowing for wide usage of counter-terrorism measures in practice.’ The law resulted in the arrest and often torture of thousands of innocent men, solely because of their religious and/or political beliefs and practices.

According to former Tunisian Judge Mokhtar Yahyaoui, founding member of the Association for Support of Political Prisoners who was pushed out of his job due to his vocal opposition to judicial interference, the 2003 Anti-Terrorism Law was a direct result of US pressure for greater Tunisian cooperation in the ‘war on terror’. Judge Yahyaoui stated his belief that US military assistance to the Tunisian government was conditioned upon Tunisia’s counter-terror cooperation and accused the Ben Ali regime of ‘selling our sons to the Americans’ as part of this effort.

Though US president Barack Obama has now become a vocal cheerleader for the ‘Arab Spring’, it will be difficult for Tunisians to forget the many years in which successive US administrations, including Obama’s, maintained close relations with the Ben Ali regime despite their knowledge, as documented in numerous State Department Annual Human Rights Reports and confirmed by Wikileaks’ release of statements from the US ambassador to Tunisia, that it was patently corrupt and repressive.

From recent statements made by Obama it is unclear whether any lessons have been learned about the causes of the Tunisian revolution. Particularly worrying were statements made in Obama’s May 24 speech to the British parliament. Despite expressing US support for democratic change in the region, he claimed that Americans ‘must squarely acknowledge that we have enduring interests in the region: to fight terror with partners who may not always be perfect.’ It seems from this statement and others that Obama has either failed to grasp, or has chosen to ignore, the collective grievances expressed by Tunisians, and others in the region, that the repression they experienced for so many years at the hands of brutal tyrants was facilitated, if not enabled, by US/western support.

It is clear that a significant gap exists between the perceptions of US government officials, who believe they were strong critics of the corruption and human rights abuses of the Ben Ali regime, and the Tunisian people, who perceived the US as supporters of that regime, complicit in its human rights abuses.  It is the conclusion of our delegation’s report that the US will fail to gain respect and credibility in this dramatically transformed region unless it recognizes this gap and honestly explores the reasons behind it. Ultimately, it is in the best interests of both Western and North African/Arab states that lessons learned from this exercise inform future relations, based on the strong foundations of equality and mutual respect.

Corinna Mullin is a lecturer in the Politics of the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, andAzadeh Shahshahani is a US human rights lawyer who is the Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Georgia National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project and serves as Executive Vice President and International Committee Co-Chair for the National Lawyers Guild.

International Delegation to Tunisia Issues New Report Warning that U.S. Must Respect Tunisian Sovereignty

As the struggle for freedom in the Middle East continues to demand the world’s attention, a report issued today by a group of international lawyers and academics who recently visited Tunisia warns that the U.S. and other Western governments must respect Tunisian sovereignty and not interfere in that country’s path to democracy.

According to Azadeh Shahshahani, Executive Vice President of the National Lawyers Guild and member of the delegation: “At a time of extraordinary change in the Middle East and North Africa, there is a significant divide between the perceptions of U.S. government officials, who believe they were strong critics of the corruption and human rights abuses of the Ben Ali regime, and the Tunisian people, who perceived the U.S. as supporters of that regime, complicit in its human rights abuses. If the U.S. is ever to regain its respect and credibility in that region, it is important to understand and explore the role played by Western governments as an impediment to change, and how that role must be altered in the future.” 

Shahshahani and three fellow lawyers and Guild members–Steven Goldberg, Audrey Bomse, and Tom Nelson–participated in the delegation.

From March 12 to 19, 2011, the delegation–which included members of the U.S.-based National Lawyers Guild as well as attorneys from the UK and Turkey–visited Tunisia at the invitation of the Tunisian National Bar Association. The report, “Promises and Challenges: The Tunisian Revolution of 2010-2011,”discusses Tunisia’s history under the disgraced Ben Ali regime and the conditions and events which led to its downfall in January 2011.

While in Tunisia, delegation members met with representatives of the interim Tunisian government, including the Prime Minister and Justice Minister, and a broad spectrum of others who were instrumental in bringing about the dramatic changes in the country: human rights organizations, trade unionists and members of the national labor federation, leaders of major opposition parties, lawyers, journalists, women’s organizations, and young people who had facilitated the revolution through the use of social media.

The report discusses the impact of the Bush and Obama administrations’ war on terror on Tunisia. Delegation members met with numerous former political prisoners–most of whom were Islamists–who had been imprisoned and tortured by the Ben Ali regime, which was being funded by Western governments including the United States. Based on those interviews and an off-the-record meeting with a representative of the U.S. Embassy, the report discusses in detail the complicity of the U.S. in these abuses resulting from military, financial, and diplomatic support, and concludes with a series of recommendations which will help to ensure that Tunisia’s path to democracy will be unencumbered by the expectations and demands of Western governments.

The National Lawyers Guild, founded in 1937, is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.

Download the report

Boston: Tunisia Report Back June 20 with Azadeh Shahshahani

Report Back: Tunisia with Azadeh Shahshahani
June 20, 12:30 pm
Where: 1st Floor Conference Room
14 Beacon Street
Boston, MA

“Hands Off the Tunisian Revolution” says international delegation of lawyers and academics – A group of lawyers from the U.S., U.K. and Turkey have been investigating U.S. and European complicity in human rights abuses committed by the Ben Ali regime. Join us to hear Atlanta attorney and National Lawyers Guild Executive Vice President Azadeh Shahshahani, a member of the delegation, speak about their findings!

May 13: Portland Report Back from Tunisia

The Portland Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and the Honorable Diana Stuart, Edward Jones, Richard Baldwin and Robert Wollheim, invite you to a…

REPORT BACK FROM TUNISIA
Friday, May 13, 2011
12:00 – 1:15 PM
Multnomah County Courthouse
1021 SW 4th Ave.,
Room 226
Judge Wyatt’s Courtroom
Portland, OR

Join Portland attorneys Steven Goldberg and Tom Nelson who were part of a delegation of lawyers and activists from the United States, England and Turkey which visited Tunisia in March at the invitation of the National Bar Association of Tunisia. The cataclysmic political changes which resulted in the fall of the Ben Ali regime in January sparked continued changes and protests throughout North Africa and the Middle East.

• How did such dramatic political change happen so quickly?
• What was the role of lawyers in bringing about this change?
• What are the challenges to the transition to democracy?
• How can U.S. lawyers and judges be part of such international delegations?

This event is a brown bag lunch. Please bring your associates and friends.

April 28: Tunisia Report Back in Atlanta, GA

Report Back: Tunisia with Azadeh Shahshahani

Where: Phillip Rush Center
1530 Dekalb Avenue, Ste A
Atlanta, GA
“Hands Off the Tunisian Revolution” says international delegation of lawyers and academics – A group of lawyers from the U.S., U.K. and Turkey have been investigating U.S. and European complicity in human rights abuses committed by the Ben Ali regime Join Human Rights Atlanta to hear Atlanta attorney and National Lawyers Guild Executive Vice President Azadeh Shahshahani, a member of the delegation, speak about their findings!

Sponsored by Human Rights Atlanta
http://www.humanrightsatlanta.org

This event is a potluck – bring friends and family. Children are welcome.

Tunisia Report Back Flyer

“Hands Off the Tunisian Revolution” Says International Delegation of Lawyers and Academics

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD – HALDANE SOCIETY OF SOCIALIST LAWYERS –

MAZLUMDER : THE ASSOCIATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOLIDARITY FOR OPPRESSED PEOPLE

“ HANDS OFF THE TUNISIAN REVOLUTION”

SAYS INTERNATIONAL DELEGATION

OF LAWYERS AND ACADEMICS

Wednesday 23 March 2011

For immediate release

A group of lawyers and academics from the US, UK and Turkey have been investigating US and European complicity in human rights abuses committed by the Ben Ali regime and will be making strong recommendations to their respective governments to allow the Tunisian revolution to develop into a genuine democracy.

The delegation was invited by the National Bar Association of Tunisia and comprised of members of the National Lawyers Guild (US), the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers (UK) and Mazlumder – The Association of Human Rights and Solidarity for Oppressed People (Turkey), and included a Tunisian lawyer now practicing in London and a Lecturer from the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. They met NGOs, labour leaders, members of political parties, journalists and bloggers, and also interviewed many former political prisoners and torture victims of the deposed Ben Ali regime.

According to Azadeh Shahshahani, Executive Vice President of the National Lawyers Guild, co-chair of its International Committee and member of the delegation, “There is enormous hope and dedication among the Tunisians we met, and they uniformly expressed a desire to live in a free, independent, and democratic Tunisia – a right that decades of Western intervention has denied them.”

The delegation also met with senior members of the interim Tunisian government including the Prime Minister, the Minister of Justice and the Ministry of Interior, as well as the head of the High Commission charged with the critical task of ensuring the realization of the objectives of the revolution and trying to ensure both democratic transition and political reform.

Audrey Bomse, of the National Lawyers Guild and co-chair of its Free Palestine Subcommittee, said that “Our delegation had three purposes: Showing support for the revolution in Tunisia, exploring the involvement of western governments with the prior Ben-Ali regime which was extraordinarily corrupt and repressive, and trying to understand the changes which are happening in the Middle East.”

The US delegates met with their embassy and demanded information regarding the role that Western interventionist policies had played in keeping the Ben Ali regime in power for over 20 years. Steve Goldberg, of the National Lawyers Guild, said that “We raised with the US embassy our concerns about how US policy, specifically the ‘war on terror,’ had encouraged and justified the repression of the Tunisian people and the persecution and torture of political dissidents.”

The issue of Tunisian detainees in Guantanamo Bay was raised with the US embassy, including calling upon the US government to provide compensation to former detainees who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments as a result of their inhumane treatment and wrongful detention at Guantanamo.

Tom Nelson, of the National Lawyers Guild, said that the group is preparing a report documenting its findings and recommendations. “Our recommendations include a demand that Western nations respect Tunisian sovereignty and end interference in Tunisia, including military aid to the Tunisian army. Furthermore, the US must acknowledge that its ‘war on terror’ played a major role in strengthening Ben Ali’s regime of torture and persecution.”

The group has begun to prepare a report documenting the findings and recommendations of the delegation and hopes to release that report in mid-April. Key recommendations within the report include;

●     Demanding respect for Tunisian sovereignty and an end to Western interference in Tunisian affairs.

●     Ending western military aid to the Tunisian government.

●     Recognition from the US that its “war on terror”, in which President Bush stated “you’re either with us or against us in the fight against terror,” was a major factor in the unwarranted arrest, torture, prosecution, and imprisonment of thousands of Tunisians for practicing their religion

●     Supporting and complying with any Tunisian requests regarding legal and financial accountability of Ben Ali and his associates.

●     Supporting any request from Tunisia for extradition of Ben Ali and his associates.

●     Supporting any request from Tunisia for the return of misappropriated funds.

Further accounts of the delegation’s experience are available at the delegation’s blog, https://tunisiahrdelegation.wordpress.com.

For further information contact:

Azadeh Shahshahani, evp1@nlg.org

Audrey Bomse, audreybomse@hotmail.com

Steven Goldberg, steven@stevengoldberglaw.com

Thomas Nelson zigzagtom@gmail.com

—
The National Lawyers Guild, founded in 1937, is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.

Faces of the Tunisian Revolution

As we have spent the past week in Tunisia, we have met with an array of individuals — from the Prime Minister and Justice Minister in their fine offices, to Tunisian labor and human rights leaders, to a Tunisian imprisoned in Guantanamo for over 5 years who emerged as a proud but deeply wounded person. There are so many faces and stories behind this revolution.

It’s Thursday. We began our day in a meeting with Yahyaoui Mokhtar, a Tunisian judge who was removed from his position after refusing to accede to pressure from the State Police in a corruption case. Judge Mokhtar understood the limits of functioning within a repressive regime as he witnessed numerous cases of torture and political repression, but understood the ramifications of speaking out. When he finally did, he was removed as a judge.

Judge Mokhtar spoke of the support received from groups such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, from diplomats from the U.S., U.K. and especially the Netherlands and Switzerland. But while he greatly appreciated that support, there was always the realization of the dichotomy between support for human rights, and the support for democracy. Although these diplomats objected to human rights violations, their support for true change in the Tunisian government was tempered by their fears of what the face, and religion, of a new government could be.

We spent the rest of the day meeting with the leaders of two political parties in Tunisia, the Communist Party and the Islamic (and likely majority) party, Nahdha. The two leaders from Nahdha had been, most directly, victims of the Ben-Ali regime’s repression, respectively spending 14 years and over 17 years in prison. Ashmi Ouribi described in horrifying detail the manner of his torture. We learned so much was from these discussions about Tunisia’s history, but two points were striking.

First, in this revolution, the social movement (led by young people, and fueled by their use of social media) was well ahead of the political movement and the political parties. The older leaders thought the young people and students were disinterested in politics, unaffected by the Ben-Ali’s regime of political repression (unless they were Muslim). They were wrong.

Second, what was perhaps most inspiring was that despite the ideological and obviously religious differences between these, and other, political parties in Tunisia, they understood that those differences must be put aside if revolution was to happen. In 2005, the 18th of October Coalition for Freedom and Rights drafted a series of agreements in which these parties united over various principles. There must be freedom of religion in Tunisia, people must be allowed to hold their own political beliefs, the vision of the future democracy in Tunisia must be secular. There were more agreements but all understood that this was the only way to democracy.

As a new constitution is drafted and government established over the next months, the sense is that for the first several years it will likely be a national coalition government until parties — transparently and over time – develop their programs and convey their messages to the Tunisian people. This work has been impossible as parties had been illegal and repressed, their leaders and members imprisoned and tortured. As many have told us, this revolution is only half way through. But what a first half it has been.

Steven Goldberg
Portland, Oregon, USA

Photographs from Tunisia Delegation

Photos credit Azadeh Shahshahani

At the Tunisian people's celebration of the release of political prisoners the other day...the poster says: "torture is a crime; you cannot be silent about it."

Demonstration today in front of our hotel (L'avenue Habib Bourguiba) on occasion of Hilary Clinton's visit to Tunisia

Members of delegation with Interim Justice Minister of Tunisia and the President of the Tunisian Bar Association.

Facebook: Friend of the Revolution?

The Revolution will not be televised…but it is on facebook. One recurring theme during our conversations with all the grassroots Tunisian activists we have spoken to is the key role that new media played in propelling the revolution beyond Sidi Bouzid and into the consciousness of all Tunisian people. We were fortunate enough to meet with a number of key new media journalists and writers, all of whom played a significant role in spreading the message.

Liliah Westlay spoke of her frustration with her bosses at the magazine she was working on, as they tried to restrain her from reporting on incidents of repression and torture she knew to be going on under the Ben Ali regime. She was told that if she spoke out, she would have problems. He went as far as to encourage her to join the then ruling RCD party with a view to making the political changes she craved from inside the establishment. Her reaction was to publish her material instead on blogs and Facebook.

In order to avoid bring harassment on herself and her family, she would frequently have to change her online identity, IP address and email and she was always careful not to give too much personal information away in her posts.

Other bloggers such as Henda Hendoud were less concerned, blogging in a personal capacity under her own name and speaking out on controversial issues such as religion and sexuality as well as politics.

Liliah described it as a need to shock people into realising what was happening. There were always rumours about torture and repression by the political police but there was never anything reported in the mainstream (and government controlled) media. Blogs and Facebook allowed young people to expose the secrets of the Ben Ali. And the message started spreading like wildfire.

Towards the end of 2010, Henda had received about 1 million hits to her blog and there were numerous others like hers. This gives you a sense of the size of the phenomenon. This of course was a totally grass-roots movement, untouched by the internal politics and government interventions that plagued event the best intentioned trade unions and other activist organisations. This is something that the organisations themselves now recognise and they know that they have to work to engage the youth of Tunisia and to remain accountable them as the revolution continues as it is clear that they will not tolerate a return to the bad old days of cronyism.

Facebook also deserves a special mention here. Some in the west think of the ubiquitous social networking site as potentially intrusive and banal but it’s role as an open platform for the instant exchange of ideas, information and as a tool of revolutionary organisation can not be underestimated. Just one look at an open profile such as

What is even more unexpected is the lengths that Facebook itself went to in order to assist the revolutionaries. Many Tunisian activists were having their sites hacked, blocked and corrupted. Many complained to Facebook’s administrators and Liliah Westlay sent a list of names of people who had been blocked presumably by the government. Joey Sullivan, head of security for Facebook acknowledged that they never had such problems with people trying to block and hack into Facebook as they had with Tunisia. Facebook then took the step of improving their security and when a Tunisian page became blocked, providing them with a secure domain (https://) in order to allow their posting to continue.

The bloggers continue to promote the revolution. One group, nawaat.org was recently awarded the 2011 Netizen Prize by Reporters Sans Frontiers and others dream of jobs in a new, free press. Whatever happens in the coming months in Tunisia, you can bet that you can read it here first;

http://nawaat.org/portail/

http://www.facebook.com/TunisianRevolt

https://twitter.com/#!/actu_tunisie

Anna Morris