The Tunisian Ministry of Justice has decided to declare war on “fake news” and intox, in a press release published jointly with the Ministry of the Interior and that of Technologies, on August 23, 2023, after a meeting with the President of the Republic, Kaïs Saïed, on cybercrime. According to NGO reports, so far, Tunisia’s legal arsenal has more often targeted political opponents or journalists than disseminators of false information.
2 mins
With our correspondent in Tunis, Lilia Blaise
The Tunisian Head of State had already promulgated a presidential decree in September 2022 which fights against the spread of false information on social networks.
In a meeting on Wednesday evening, Kaïs Saïed declared that death threats, insults, denigrations and false rumors have nothing to do with freedom of expression, without citing specific cases or examples that led to the tightening of screws immediately announced by the Ministry of Justice.
This statement explains that legal proceedings have been initiated against administrators of Facebook pages, accounts and electronic groups with the aim of disseminating and publishing false information on the basis of harm to others, to the security national or even to the Tunisian State.
These measures come in a context where the Tunisian president has repeated that some wish to destabilize the country with slanderous campaigns at the same time as certain crises or controversies are declared in the country, such as the one around the price of bread in recent months.
Except that, until now, the Tunisian legal arsenal has often targeted political opponents or journalists more than broadcasters of false information, according to NGO reports. The journalists’ union speaks of around twenty lawsuits against lawyers, bloggers and journalists on the basis of Decree 54, which punishes the spread of false news with five years in prison.
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