The background is as follows.

In 1989, Marzouki, a professor at the University of Sousse Medical School became the president of what was probably Tunisia's most prestigious human rights organization, - and the oldest in the Arab world - the Tunisian League for Human Rights (in french, la Ligue Tunisienne des droits de l'homme LTDL). The LTDL had survived for 20 years under the previous Tunisian president, Habib Bourguiba, had taken many blows, but had endured and built an admirable tradition of human rights work. Its members were national personalities, its press conferences got coverage in the Tunisian press of the time, unheard of today, another indication of just how much the political atmosphere in the country has deteriorated in recent years. With a genuine constituency and place in Tunisian society, the LTDL was a force to reckon with and Ben Ali knew this.

Ben Ali played his cards skillfully, coopting the LTDL's leadership into his government by offering them positions in his government (ministries of health and education went to two prominent LTDL leaders) while working to destory the organization at its base. As a consequence, the human rights movement was, in effect, gently politically decapitated, its most talented and experienced organizers kicked upstairs. But as Ben Ali offered a few LTDL militants positions in his government, he turned the screws on their organization in a broader sense. The LTDL's freedom to maneuver and organize was simultaneously and systematically curtailed, its militants and members more and more frequently harassed. Perhaps he learned from the master of them all, Hassan II of Morocco whose favorite sport besides golf was torturing human rights activists and left militants while inviting their leaders to dine with him at one of his palaces.

It was about this time, in 1989, that Dr. Marzouki accepted the increasingly thankless task of the LTDL's presidency. From the outset, Marzouki, surprising some, proved to be an independent minded man of principle whose vision of a human rights movement was to condemn violations `wherever they appear'. Such an approach takes no small amount of courage; more unusual, the good doctor matched his words with deeds. An early show of gutsiness came in the summer of 1990 when, against the advice of his board and several LTDL chapters he spoke out publicly, condemning the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, one of the few voices in the Arab world to do so. Tuquoi and Beau⁽¹⁾ argue that Ben Ali hoped to engage Marzouki in the Tunisian government's anti-Islamic fundamentalist crusade which was just building steam at the time, but Marzouki failed to take the bait.

In hopes of neutralizing Marzouki, and aware that the doctor still enjoyed prestige, Ben Ali met with the human rights leader in 1991. As sometimes happens, the meeting produced the opposite effect. In late 1991, the LTDL's communiques became sharper, the accusations of government human rights abuses more pointed. A kind of verbal waltz ensued. The Tunisian media, already more in the hands of the government, stepped up their attacks of Marzouki who was, given the growing press censorship, only able to use the foreign - again most French - press to respond. The earlier warmer personal pr Marzouki had previously enjoyed, turned to open hositility.

Again the screws were tightened but in a clever sort of way. At a time when Ben Ali was in the process of quadrupling the size of his internal security force, the LTDL was warned that to continue to function, it must `keep a low profile', which meant to cease its criticisms of the government or face the prospect of being shut down. The choices offered were stark: either the LTDL practice `self censorship' or the government would do so for it. It was under such pressure, bordering-on-but-not-yet-reaching-repression, that the LTDL held its 1994 congress. Even given its increasingly crippled status, the LTDL represented a challenge, and any challenge, regardless how modest was viewed as a threat. Again, the Ben Ali government `made its contribution' in what was already becoming a pattern of Kafkaesque gestures. Rather than cancel the event outright and trigger international protests, Ben Ali took another approach. The government `permitted' the congress to proceed, however it demanded, in the name of democracy bien sur!, that the LTDH change its membership by-laws and become `a totally open and voluntary membership organization'.

This new regulation worked into two ways: first it suggested that the LTDH was not an open or democratic organization, ie. that it was some kind of front organization either for Marxists, Islamic fundamentalists or both. Secondly, it provided a practical way to gut the organization. With its membership requirements thus pried open, the organization was vulnerable to government infiltration. This infiltration was transparent, but cleverly executed. Having forced the human rights group to open its doors in such a way as to let in friend and foe alike, Ben Ali then took the next logical step. He mobilized the membership of the ruling Rassemblement Constitutionel Democratique (RCD) - (formerly, under Bourguiba, the Neo-Destourian Socialist Party) to take the organization by storm. In what looked something approaching nothing short of a Tunisian human rights orgy, 1300 RCD members, suddenly zealous human rights defenders, applied for LTDH membership just before the 1994 Congress and as a result, in something akin to a Russian bear-hug, killed the organization from within. As the Congress approached, the good doctor found himself almost totally isolated within his own organization. Not bad. Very creative.

The congress was held anyway, and once again, despite being on a sinking ship, Marzouki showed his metal. Well aware that his organization had been outflanked and was about to be placed in a state of cryonic suspension, Marzouki utilized the only card he had left in his deck - his opening presidential speech to the Congress. Again a crisis. Rejecting a tradition and (and typical Stalinist) pressure to circulate copies of his speech to a national coordinating committee beforehand, Marzouki prepared his remarks alone. I wish I could have been there when on February 5, 1994 before several hundred LTDH delegates, foreign ambassadors and the foreign press, Marzouki began his speech. Leaving no holds unbarred, Marzouki spoke. He detailed the torture, the deaths in prison, the pattern of intimidation of family members of human rights activists, the suspension of civil liberties, the muzzling of the press and the general drift towards dictatorship while Ben Ali's boys and girls in the audience squirmed uncomfortably.

But before Marzouki could finish, the League's vice president, a Ben Ali thane, Khemais Chammari, jumped to the podium pulled the microphone from the president's hand.(2) Marzouki, his speech unfinished but his dignity in tact, left the hall of the Hotel Hamilcar, just outside of Tunis on the train line to La Marsa. Although it has continued to exist since, the LTDH was from that moment on functionally brain dead. It had lost its soul. The occasional twitching from its body should not be misconstrued as serious human rights work.

For Marzouki, life became much more complicated. It could be worse. He is alive, and compared to many has spent only moderate time in prison. His international status protects him to a modest degree. Liquidating Marzouki would cause Ben Ali more problems than sparing him. Besides, with Marzouki free, the government can claim that there is a human rights opposition after all that is `tolerated'. But that time forth, the harassment has been unending. The day after his grand exit from the floor of the LTDH congress, in Sousse, Marzouki announced his candidacy for the Tunisian presidency, a kind of symbolic jab at Ben Ali. Given all the official restrictions on opposition parties and individuals from running, his campaign went nowhere. Soon thereafter, Marzouki was indicted on the trumped charges of stealing a car and then imprisoned for having questioned the legitimacy of the Tunisian government in a Spanish newspaper. Released, his passport confiscated (the fate of many human rights activists), his family members remaining in Tunisia have been harassed by the security agencies, especially two nephews. His more immediate family fled the country.

In the past year, Marzouki has been arrested at least twice. On June 5, 1999 he was seized in broad day light by 3 policemen, dragged before a judge and accused of violating the constitution by having illegal `unrecognized' contacts (maintien d'une association non reconnue), of circulating materials that disrupt the public and of spreading rumors. Two days later he was released. But then his home phone lines were cut and his teaching at the medical school in Sousse was curtailed to almost naught. Then in November, 1999 he was re-arrested, this time with fellow human rights activist, Mustapha Ben Jaffar, for having criticized the October 24, 1999 Tunisian presidential elections which Ben Ali won by something-less-than-credible 99.44% of the vote. (3)

La lutta continua.

ps. for much - but not all - of the information here I am indebted to Turquoi and Beau Notre Ami Ben Ali.

2. Poor Chammari. He would afterwards become active in a more constructive manner in the organization and as a result was forced into political exile by Ben Ali several years laters. His family remaining in Tunisia would be harassed in his place (see the Human Rights Watch Tunisia Link for more details)

2. Friends of Tunisia Newsletter. PO Box 25245, Washington DC 20007, December 1999, p.1.