Tunisia: Ennahda condemns restrictions on prisoners’ access to media

Tunisia’s Ennahda movement has expressed solidarity with Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, head of the National Salvation Front, who has begun an open-ended hunger strike to protest being denied, along with other political prisoners, access to media, with only newspapers and television channels that echo the authorities’ views being allowed.

In a statement on Thursday, the movement said the measure “represents a blatant reversal of gains made by prisoners after the revolution” and was a new attempt by the authorities to withhold information from prisoners and isolate them from the outside world.

The movement rejected the prison administration’s decision to restrict the media previously allowed to prisoners, saying it “violates laws and international conventions signed by the Tunisian state” and represents a new form of mistreatment of political prisoners.

It also renewed its call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners and an end to political trials that undermine rights and freedoms, which it said “remain a stain on the country’s reputation and a major reason for its declining international standing and deterioration in various fields”.

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