AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program

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Report on Science and Human Rights

Fall 2002 Vol XXII, No. 2

Dr. Moncef Marzouki Honored at 2002 AAAS Annual Meeting

The Science and Human Rights Program honored Tunisian physician Moncef Marzouki at its yearly reception, which was held last February in conjunction with the AAAS Annual Meeting in Boston. The reception provides an opportunity to recognize a scientist who, through action and example, has promoted human rights, usually at great personal risk. It has been a tradition at the AAAS Annual Meeting since 1994.

Dr. Marzouki is one of Tunisia's leading human rights activists and the current spokesman for the National Council on Liberties in Tunisia. His human rights activism developed from his work as a physician and professor of public health. In his practice of pediatric neurology, Dr. Marzouki found that Tunisia had few legal rights protecting children with disabilities. He came to believe that being a doctor meant addressing all the needs of his patients, not only physical ailments, but also their social and political needs.

Dr. Marzouki served as the President of the Tunisian League for Human Rights from 1989-1994. As a price of his activism, he endured years of systematic intimidation and harassment at the hands of the Tunisian government. He was followed by the police, his home phone and fax were repeatedly cut, and his mail arrived opened or not at all. In 1994, after declaring himself the opposition candidate to Tunisian president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Dr. Marzouki was imprisoned and held in solitary confinement for four months. That same year, the government also struck a professional blow to Dr. Marzouki and shut down the Center for Community Medicine, a clinic he founded, which provided medical care to residents in the slums of Sousse, a city 100 kilometers south of Tunis.

In 2000, Dr. Marzouki again faced professional reprisals for his human rights activism. In July the Ministry of Health dismissed Dr. Marzouki from his position as professor of public health at the University of Sousse because of statements he had made during a visit to the United States the month before. The government subsequently charged Dr. Marzouki with "spreading false information intended to disturb the public order" for circulating a paper criticizing Tunisia's human rights practices at a meeting of human rights defenders in Morocco held earlier that year. Dr. Marzouki was convicted in December 2000, following a trial that failed to meet international standards of fairness, and sentenced to one year in prison. In September 2001, international pressure caused the government to suspend the sentence. Unable to earn a living and subject to increased repression at home, Dr. Marzouki made the difficult decision to leave Tunisia, and accepted a position in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris at Bobigny. He arrived in Paris in December 2001.

In his remarks at the Science and Human Rights reception, Dr. Marzouki said that he was thinking about his friends still in Tunisia fighting for human rights. Dr. Marzouki believes that being a human rights activist has become even more difficult in the past year, particularly in the Muslim world, where attitudes toward the West have become more polarized following the events of September 11, 2001, and its aftermath.

Dr. Marzouki also observed that human rights activists all over the world must come to terms with their own internal fears and doubts. That is why international recognition like the Science and Human Rights reception is so important. He concluded by saying, "You make it easy for me to be a human rights activist."

An audio recording of Dr. Marzouki's remarks at the Science and Human Rights reception is available on the SHR website. The AAASHRAN alerts issued by the Science and Human Rights Program on Dr. Marzouki's behalf are also available.