Threats and slanders leveled against government oppositionists by people using aliases on social networking websites have increased, with those anonymous people showing special creativity in verbal assault and outrage over whoever opposes the existing authorities. They have gone so far as to send death threats through some media outlets.

Among those “permanent opposition” figures who have not changed their principles but persisted to struggle and endure organized attacks, is journalist Naziha Réjiba – also known as Oum Ziad – who was a strong oppositionist to Ben Ali’s regime.

Threats and slanders leveled against government oppositionists by people using aliases on social networking websites have increased, with those anonymous people showing special creativity in verbal assault and outrage over whoever opposes the existing authorities. They have gone so far as to send death threats through some media outlets.

Among those “permanent opposition” figures who have not changed their principles but persisted to struggle and endure organized attacks, is journalist Naziha Réjiba – also known as Oum Ziad – who was a strong oppositionist to Ben Ali’s regime.

Oum Ziad was a prominent Arabic Teacher in one of Tunis’ secondary schools; however, she resigned in September 2003 to fill her appetite for journalism and writing. Together with Moncef Marzouki (the current president), she founded the Conference for the Republic Party (CPR) and was its Secretary General until she resigned in July 2011, a few months after the revolution; having been discontent with the CPR performance as one of the ruling troika parties.

Oum Ziad criticized the government and went beyond criticizing the positions of the ministers and the three presidents (the prime minister, the president, and the Constituent Assembly chairman) to criticizing Rashid Al-Ghannushi, leader of the ruling Ennahda Movement. Consequently, many pro-government, pro-Ennahda, Facebook pages launched severe defaming campaigns aimed at destroying her long history of struggle against a corrupted regime.

Although she was one of the few who had defended Islamists under Ben Ali, it did not redeem her in her today’s criticism of their rule and ways of governance.

“I am a victim of my independency and clear stance against Ennahda in particular and the troika in general,” said Oum Ziad. “It is an objective criticism aimed at reforming rather than uprooting.”

Asking for too much democracy

Abdulsattar Ben Moussa, the first chairman of the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights after the January 14, 2011, is another national figure still undesired by the current government and its supporters.

As the National Bar Association chairman, Ben Moussa, along with other colleagues, confronted Bechir Tekkari, Minister of Justice, during Ben Ali’s battle to subjugate the lawyers, and staged a sit-in and a hunger strike on May 27, 2006. Throughout his chairmanship tenure, Ben Moussa was never received by Ben Ali.

The absence of an independent jurisprudence, freedom of media, and administrative neutrality required to insure transparent elections, said Ben Moussa, “will kill the democratic transition project in its cradle, turning transitional justice into a fake slogan.” This statement has made him as a permanent enemy of the state for some currently in power.

“Any authority may practice legal violence, but when it becomes illegal violence, human rights activists will criticize and denounce such practices, which exposes them to criticism and rejection by that authority and its supporters,” he explained.

“Nothing has changed. In the past we fought against Ben Ali and were exposed to rejection, and today we are rejected by the rulers and their followers,” said Ben Moussa adding that he paid no attention to the “silly material” published by some Facebook pages about him.

Racial slurs

For months, Najiba Hamrouni, head of the National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT), has been exposed to a frenzied defamation campaign by pro-Ennahda figures and has even been racially insulted based on her dark complexion. In 2008, Najiba was a member of the elected executive board of the first syndicate of journalists in Tunisia. Being renowned for its independency and steadfastness, the board however was turned against because it refused to sign a petition supporting the re-nomination of Ben Ali as president.

Along with many of her friends, Hamrouni faced harassment by Ben Ali’s police and a defamation campaign by tabloids publishing articles written by the Ministry of Interior.

Insisting on maintaining the SNJT independence and her colleagues’ freedom, Hamrouni now lives in the same condition. “It is shameful that suspicious Facebook pages and newspapers defend the government, using low level subjects and language that offend the government rather than defend it.”

She believes that such pages adopt the same methods used by members of the former Rally Party.  “Those behind such pages are racists violating the law and international human rights agreements.”

The crime of impartiality

Judge Kolthom Kenno, head of the Tunisian Judge Association faces daily defamation campaigns is and was long subject to harassment by the former regime. Although she wanted to return to Tunis where she lived, Kenno was arbitrarily moved from the Court of First Instance in Kairouan (central Tunisia) to Tozeur (southern Tunisia) as punishment, she says, for being independent and impartial.

The arbitrary movement took place in the aftermath of the coup d’état led by Ben Ali’s authorities against the Legal Office of the Judges Association in 2005, because of Kenno’s position and call for judiciary independence.

The revolution in Tunisia ended in changing the government, but the demand of Kenno has not yet changed and, consequently, she has not changed as a source of worry for the government and its supporters because she simply said “No for domesticating the jurisprudence,” stressing that transitional justice and democratic principles will never be realized as long as the government controls jurisprudence.

Same old tactics

“What we experience today is worse than that of the past,” said Abdul Nasser Al-Uwaini, a former opponent of Ben Ali.

The same corruption-generating system is still here,” said Al-Uwaini. “Only colors and names have been changed.”