5/10/2017 Tunisia: Spate of Prosecutions for Free Speech | Human Rights Watch perceived as offensive to Islam. One is in prison while continue to ght human rights abuses. Please give now to support our work » the second fledHelp theuscountry and obtained asylum in France. × On May 29, 2013, the military court of Sfax, in southeastern Tunisia, tried Hakim Ghanmi on charges of “undermining the reputation of the army,” “defamation of a public official,” and “disturbing others through public communication networks.” In April, Ghanmi had written a letter to the defense minister that he published on his blog, Warakat Tounsia, criticizing the director of the military hospital in Gabes. In March, a university professor, Raja Ben Slama and a blogger, Olfa Riahi, were charged for allegedly libeling public officials after they publicly alleged, respectively, wrongdoing by the foreign affairs minister and the general rapporteur of the constitution at the National Constituent Assembly. Under human rights law, most speech including criticism of public officials should not be penalized. The UN Human Rights Committee has said:   Defamation laws must be crafted with care to ensure that they… do not serve, in practice, to stifle freedom of expression. At least with regard to comments about public figures, consideration should be given to avoiding penalizing or otherwise rendering unlawful untrue statements that have been published in error but without malice. In any event, a public interest in the subject matter of the criticism should be recognized as a defense.   https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/09/13/tunisia-spate-prosecutions-free-speech 5/9