| Summary: | "Following the ouster of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, Tunisia's interim government has begun the task of reforming the many laws that restricted the rights of its citizens. During his 23-year rule, Ben Ali used these laws to criminalize critical speech, outlaw independent associations and opposition parties, prevent dissidents from traveling, demote independent judges, and imprison as terrorists young men innocent of plotting or committing any violent act. Most of these stifling laws, which gave a veneer of legality to Ben Ali's authoritarian rule, remain in effect. The interim government has dramatically eased enforcement but has not dispensed with them altogether: for example, it invoked an infamous provision on spreading information "that could disturb the public order" to jail a would-be whistle-blower policeman. The case shows the urgency of replacing repressive laws with laws that neither the executive nor the judiciary can use to prevent Tunisians from peacefully exercising their rights. Tunisia's Repressive Laws: The Reform Agenda surveys 10 areas of repressive legislation, providing case studies of how the Ben Ali regime used laws to imprison Tunisians and otherwise violate their rights. The report presents recommendations for how to revise those laws to harmonize them with the international human rights treaties that Tunisia has ratified. These include laws on the press and defamation, the Internet, associations, public assemblies, political parties, passports, presidential elections, presidential immunity, combating terrorism, and promoting judges."--P. [4] of cover.
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