Tunisia has softened a cybercrime law that has landed journalists and activists in prison, letting first-time offenders pay fines instead of serving time. The amendment to Decree 54, which went into effect on Wednesday, sets fines of 10,000 to 20,000 Tunisian dinars ($3,370 to $6,740) for a first offence of spreading “false news” and related violations. The fines replace a five-year prison sentence.
However, repeat offenders may still face jail. Rights and media freedom advocates in Tunisia and abroad have long opposed the decree as repressive, saying it has been wielded against President Kais Saied’s opposition, activists and reporters. The government, meanwhile, says the decree protects people and public order from attack, and is needed to tackle online crime and disinformation.
So what has changed, how has the decree been used, and why has Tunisia softened it now? Decree 54, issued by President Kais Saied in September 2022, made it an offence to spread falsehoods by electronic means. Until this week, anyone convicted of circulating untrue information deemed threatening to public security, or to infringe on other people’s rights, risked up to five years in prison.
The penalties also applied when allegedly doctored content, personal data or untrue allegations were spread to stir up hatred, incite attacks, defame someone, damage their reputation or cause them material or moral harm. Targeting a public official or a person of equivalent status raised the ceiling to a decade behind bars and a fine of 100,000 dinars (more than $32,000). Anyone who reoffended faced six months behind bars on top of a 50,000-dinar fine (more than $16,000).
The penalties doubled when the offence was aimed at a public official or someone of equivalent status. The decree has garnered widespread criticism from Tunisian and international organisations concerned with press freedom. The law was “one of the potent tools of oppression used by the government to crush dissent, crack down on civic space and arbitrarily restrict the freedom of expression in the country,” Said Benarbia, Middle East and North Africa director of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), told Al Jazeera.
Rafik Abdessalem, Tunisia’s foreign minister from 2011 to 2013 and a senior figure in the Islamist Ennahdha party, said the decree had been used “to silence every voice critical of the regime”. Ennahdha was a leading opposition party under Saied until he initiated a severe crackdown against it, sentencing its leadership, including Abdessalem, to long prison sentences, some in absentia. The National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) documented that hundreds of journalists, bloggers, opposition politicians, lawyers and activists had been tried under the decree since it came into force in 2022, and declared the situation an “emergency”.
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