Dr. Moncef Marzouki is one of Tunisia's leading human rights defenders. A former president of the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH), he is presently the spokesperson for the National Council on Liberties in Tunisia (CNLT). Dr. Marzouki has faced systematic harassment and intimidation by the government of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali as a result of his outspoken criticism of the government's authoritarian policies. In reprisal for his activism, Dr Marzouki has been deprived since 1992 of his ability to carry out his professional duties as a professor of medicine in a public university and teaching hospital, although he still has a formal position there. He was jailed for four months in 1994 after he dared to put his name up as an opposition candidate to President Ben Ali in that year's elections. His home phone and fax lines are routinely cut, and he has been unable to communicate from his university office. Following threats to himself and his family, his wife and children moved to Europe. Until several weeks ago, however, he has been without a passport and unable to travel abroad for professional purposes or to visit his family.

In response to the Tunisian government's efforts to smother the Tunisian League for Human Rights and other independent civic organizations, in December 1998 Dr. Marzouki and other veteran human rights activists announced the formation of the National Council for Liberties in Tunisia. The Ministry of the Interior has refused to grant the CNLT legal status as a nongovernmental organization, but the organization has nevertheless continued to issue critical bulletins and reports documenting government repression and denial of fundamental civil liberties. In June 1999, Dr. Marzouki was abducted by plainclothes security officials and held incommunicado for several days. He and other prominent CNLT members have faced repeated judicial inquiries on spurious charges of "defaming the public order" and "spreading false information."

President Ben Ali of Tunisia will be making a state visit to Washington on July 13. President Ben Ali's government boasts incessantly of its human rights record and purported initiatives to deepen political pluralism, but there are few countries where the divergence between such claims and the actual record is so great. Last October, President Ben Ali won re-election by 99.42 percent of the vote--an achievement that speaks more to Tunisia's authoritarian reality than its democratic pretenses.

In response to mounting international criticism of its human rights record, and in an attempt to defuse such criticism prior to President Ben Ali's arrival in Washington, the government recently returned their passports to Dr. Marzouki and several other prominent activists. Dr. Marzouki will be in Washington as the guest of Human Rights Watch from June 28 to July 2.