Over at The Arabist, Issandr El Amrani ruminates on Facebook’s role in Middle Eastern politics, a subject I’ve had my eye on for quite some time. Drawing on the recent example of Egyptian reformer El Baradei and his enormous Facebook following, El Amrani marvels at the level of Facebook use for activism in the [...]

First, governments blocked Blogspot. Then they blocked Facebook, and then Twitter. And just when technophiles all over the globe started groaning, a couple of governments got a bit wiser to social media and, rather than block the entire platform for the transgressions of one user, began blocking individual accounts instead. Notably, this has happened in [...]

Back in October, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, began processing requests for domain names in non-Latin scripts such as Arabic.
In theory, this lowers the barrier for lower-income Arabic-speakers who are unfamiliar with the Latin alphabet to get online.
But for now, at least, registration is limited to official government domains, sparking [...]

The virtual world offers new opportunities for political expression and communication. Why political discussion has migrated to the Internet is obvious. In almost every Arab country, a tight state grip on the media, books and films severely limits freedom of expression. But what impact is this free-wheeling political discussion and debate in digital space having [...]

What are we to make of it when Ben Ali, Tunisia’s much venerated president and ruler of the Palace of Carthage, is prepared to accept only 89.62 per cent of the vote? And this from someone more used to commanding the kind of figures associated with voting in Soviet times. A commentary by Hamid Skif
President [...]

On October 20th, 2009, Zouhaïer Makhlouf, a Tunisia Human rights activist and correspondent of Assabil Online website has been arrested for publishing a video report online about the environmental pollution in Nabeul (Dar Chaabane El Fehri), a coastal town in northeastern Tunisia. [...]

Next Sunday, 25 October 2009, Tunisia will hold presidential and legislative elections in which it is virtually guaranteed that the incumbent, Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, who has been in power for the last 22 years and is now opposed by three other candidates, will be re-elected as president. As well, the ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party is expected to retain a majority of the seats in the parliament.

We must put an end to tyranny and humiliation. Tunisian taxpayers’ money is being spent to maintain the status quo of the oppression machine. Real progress is dramatically slowed down due to the waste and mismanagement of our money.
Tunisia does fit to stand next to the civilized and free nations. We have room to grow, [...]

Due to capital flows restrictions, shallow financial markets and conservative exchange rate policies, the Maghreb—Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia—escaped the first wave of the global crisis, unlike most developing regions. However, it has been severely affected by dramatic falls in commodity prices, world trade, remittances, [...]

Tunisia is the most peaceful country in Africa, according to the latest Global Peace Index. It is also the top African country in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index.
The news has clearly delighted the Tunisian government.
“These new rankings reflect the political stability enjoyed by Tunisia and the depth of the social dimension of its [...]

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today protested to the Tunisian government over the action of police who laid siege to the offices of Tunisian Syndicate of Journalists and assaulted the union’s President after he tried to enter the building.
“This is heavy-handed and violent interference in journalism,” said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. “It is [...]

[...] Torture remains pervasive in detention centres, particularly those of the State Security Department, the organisation warned, and statements allegedly obtained under torture are being accepted by courts as evidence to convict defendants. Incommunicado detention is also being covered up with officials falsifying arrest documents. [...]

Although Tunisia has actively sought to develop its information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, the government continues to pervasively block a range of Web content and has used nontechnical means to impede journalists and human rights activists from doing their work. The filtering of political content and restrictions on online activity has [...]

Les autorités tunisiennes devraient mettre fin au bannissement arbitraire de l’activiste politique et journaliste Abdallah Zouari dans un village isolé, a déclaré Human Rights Watch dans une lettre envoyée aujourd’hui au ministre de la justice Béchir Tekkari et au ministre de l’intérieur Rafeek Belhaj. D’abord imposé dans le cadre d’une sanction judiciaire, l’exil de Zouari [...]

BRUSSELS (AP) — The world’s largest pilots’ group urged Tunisian authorities Monday to reinstate the captain of an airliner that ditched in the sea in 2005, because of his “outstanding airmanship” during the accident.
Sixteen of the 39 people on board the Tuninter ATR-72 twin-turboprop airliner died when it went down off Sicily on Aug. 6, [...]

On Saturday, July 4, 2009, The 8th Criminal Chamber of the Court of First Instance in Tunis has condemned a Tunisian professor, Dr Khedija Arfaoui, to eight months in prison for spreading rumors, on the social networking website Facebook, liable to disrupt public order.