In 1990 the Tunisian Association of Newspaper Directors proudly joined the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), an international trade organization known for its commitment to the freedom of the press. Seven years later, in June 1997, WAN expelled it for failing to battle serious violations of that freedom. What happened?

Tunisia is a U.S. ally with the image of a politically moderate Mediterranean tourist paradise. But in 1996, when WAN and other human rights groups asked for permission to explore some blemishes on this picture -- reports of press repression and of human rights abuses -- the government refused, and denied visas. Tunisian journalism, a spokesman insisted, "evolves in an open and pluralistic environment."

Or so it seems. Paris-based papers Le Monde and Liberation are sold alongside eight Tunisian dailies, four of which are privately owned. On Tunisian TV, the state-owned Channel 7 competes with Arabic and European satellite channels. But access to satellite dishes and to the Internet is tightly controlled. Foreign correspondents have repeatedly been expelled. And, working under a government that has imprisoned journalists and deprived them of passports and accreditation, the Tunisian independent press has come to mirror the propaganda-driven government outlets. All Tunisian papers now routinely attack dissidents and carry giant pictures and front-page articles lauding President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, whom they refer to as "the leader of the new era."

New era indeed. After Ben Ali's predecessor, Habib Bourguiba, led the country to independence from France in 1956, the new government founded a school of journalism and let independent journalism take root. When Ben Ali took over after a nonviolent coup in 1987, the press was promised even more freedom. It was in this honeymoon period that the Tunisian editors were admitted to WAN.

 But all too soon the government began to use the Islamist threat as a rationale for silencing Islamist and liberal publications alike. Hamadi Jebali, the editor of the Islamist weekly Al Fajr, has been imprisoned since 1991 on charges of defamation and plotting to overthrow the government. The independent weekly Le Maghreb was forced out of business in 1991, its editor imprisoned for libel.

During the 1994 election, which Presi-dent Ben Ali, the only candidate, won with 99 percent of the votes, the French dailies Le Monde and Liberation were banned for nearly a year. Ten French papers were banned in 1995 during a visit of French President Jacques Chirac. In the last six years alone, correspondents working for Reuters, the BBC, AFP, and Radio Netherlands have been expelled.

Such interference has seriously chilled journalists in Tunisia. Paradoxically, they have some reason to feel envy and admiration when they look across the border to Algeria, where journalists mourn the death of fifty-nine colleagues in the last four years. Despite the conditions in Algeria, says Salima Ghezali, editor of Algeria's La Nation and the World Press Review's international editor of 1996, "the press here is not as muzzled as the Tunisian one."

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