Tunisia lifts ban on prominent rights group

TUNIS: Tunisian authorities have lifted a ban on the local branch of prominent international NGO Avocats Sans Frontieres, the branch said on Wednesday without providing further details on the measure.
ASF said in a statement it was “resuming activities starting May 20” after the ban, imposed on May 5, was lifted.
The rights group had received a 30-day suspension, days after another prominent group, which won a Nobel Peace Prize, was targeted by a similar ban.
The group had condemned the ban as “an unjustified infringement on the freedom of civil action and a clear targeting of independent spaces that strive to serve the public good and promote the values of solidarity, justice and the rule of law.”
The temporary suspension had come 10 days after the Tunisian League for Human Rights, which won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize alongside three other groups, also had its operations suspended for a month.
On Tuesday, the Tunisian Organization of Young Doctors also said a recent 30-day ban against it had been lifted.
Amnesty International had last week accused Tunisian authorities of seeking “to use judicial means to eliminate NGOs altogether.”
At least 25 NGOs have faced bans over the past year while others were under the threat of dissolution, Amnesty said.
Al Khatt, an organization overseeing Tunisia’s most important independent investigative outlet, Inkyfada, currently faces dissolution.
Proceedings against the organization opened on Monday but the court adjourned the hearing to June 1.
Tunisia emerged from the Arab Spring as a democracy, but elected President Kais Saied staged a sweeping power grab in 2021 and rights groups have since criticized a major rollback of freedoms.
Saied has accused NGOs of receiving suspicious funds in “huge sums” from abroad, which he has called “blatant interference” in Tunisian affairs.

Tunisia lifts ban on prominent rights group