Tunisia: Free speech groups protest book seizures at Tunis airport

Tunisia: Free speech groups protest book seizures at Tunis airport: " Tunisia
Tunis closing its airport to the published word

Call to stop unfair seizures of travellers' books. By the IFEX Tunisia Monitoring Group.

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A group of international free expression organisations - including Index on Censorship - have asked the Tunisian authorities to stop their airport officials unfairly confiscating books carried by arriving travellers such as latest victim Lotfi Hajji, president of the Independent Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists. The IFEX-Tunisia Monitoring Group comments.

The Tunisian authorities are asked to investigate the treatment of Lotfi Hajji, President of the Independent Syndicate of Tunisian journalists, who had 15 books unjustly confiscated on his arrival at Tunis airport on 25 April.

The books should be returned to him immediately, and steps taken to ensure that publications that do not breach reasonable law are not taken away in this way. The confiscated books are sold freely in Morocco.

'Hundreds of journalists, writers, academics and other experts will be arriving in Tunis in November to participate in the World Summit on the Information Society, and they will all need to be sure that their papers and publications will not be confiscated,' said Ursula Owen, editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship magazine in "