Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights

The Role of the International Community

Within the European Parliament, human rights in Tunisia lacked the visibility it had in 1997, when several of the chamber’s political blocs sponsored a forum on the subject. No resolutions were adopted concerning human rights in Tunisia through the end of September. Tunisian authorities replied in writing to a list of human rights cases that had been submitted by a delegation of members of the parliament that visited in October 1997. In September 1998, the European Parliament’s Delegation for Maghreb Relations hosted a visit by Tunisian parliamentarians. During their meetings, the European parliamentarians failed to raise with the Tunisian delegation any individual cases or specific human rights abuses.

United States
The U.S. did virtually nothing publicly during the year to address the systematic patterns of violations that the State Department had accurately documented in the Tunisia chapter of its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices . The U.S. administration praised its ally’s economic liberalization and support of the Arab-Israeli peace process, while keeping human rights concerns to private démarches that, the State Department insisted, took place on a regular basis. Washington engaged in frequent military exercises with Tunisia, but gave it no military or economic assistance.

None of the high-level bilateral meetings through October resulted in any public allusion to human rights concerns. Stuart E. Eizenstat, Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs, met with President Ben Ali on June 16. He proposed a new “U.S.-Maghreb Economic Partnership” to promote private investment, telling the Tunisian-American Chamber of Commerce that it would contribute to “a more secure, more prosperous and democratic future.” Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East Martin Indyk held high-level discussions in Tunis in March, as did his deputy Ronald Neumann in September. Tunisian Defense Minister Habib Ben Yahia was received in Washington in June by high-level State Department officials.

A political officer at the U.S. embassy in Tunis maintained regular contacts with Tunisian activists and civil society, observed the trial of Khemaïs Ksila, and visited human rights lawyer Radhia Nasraoui’s office after it had been ransacked. This sort of public engagement rarely occurred at the level of the ambassador.