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2002
 Dr.
Moncef Marzouki, a medical doctor and professor of public health, has faced
systematic harassment and intimidation by the government of President Zine el-Abidine
Ben Ali in reprisal for his human rights activism. Dr. Marzouki is the former
president of the Tunisian League for Human Rights (1989-1994) and is currently
the spokesperson for the National Council on Liberties in Tunisia. In 1994,
after declaring himself the opposition candidate to President Ben Ali, he was
imprisoned for four months. Dr. Marzouki has been followed by the police, his
home phone and fax have been repeatedly cut, and his incoming mail arrives opened
or not at all. In 2001, he was convicted on criminal charges of "spreading false
information intended to disturb the public order" for circulating a private
paper that was critical of Tunisia's human rights practices during a regional
meeting of human rights defenders in Morocco. Dr. Marzouki remarked that of
all the harassment he has dealt with, "the worst sanctions were professional,
destroying a life's work." Since 1992, the Tunisian government deprived him
of his right to work as a professor of medicine in a public university and teaching
hospital. In 1994, the Tunisian government shut down the Center for Community
Medicine, a clinic he founded, which provided medical care in the poor suburbs
of Sousse, a city 100 kilometers south of Tunis. The clinic also worked to teach
medical students about the role of community medicine in helping poorer populations.
In October 2001, the Tunisian government finally suspended the criminal charges
against Dr. Marzouki. Faced with no source of income and increased personal
repression, he made the difficult decision to leave Tunisia to accept a position
at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris at Bobigny.
Dr. Marzouki has been the subject of many AAASHRAN
alerts.
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