Cyber-dissident arrested and his online newspaper censored

    Reporters Without Borders protested at the arrest on 4 June of Zouhair Yahyaoui (see photo), founder and editor of the online newspaper TUNeZINE, and the government's suppression of its website. "Barely two weeks after the referendum on the Constitution, whose proposed amendment would supposedly boost human rights in Tunisia, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali has shown the true nature of his regime as a police state that stifles all dissenting opinion," said Reporters sans frontières secretary-general Robert Ménard in a letter to interior minister Hedi M'Henni. "We demand the immediate release of Yahyaoui and the reappearance of TUNeZINE.com." Yahyaoui was arrested at a Tunis cybercafé where he was working by six plainclothes police, who showed no credentials and gave no reason for the arrest. He was taken to his home, where the police searched his bedroom and seized his computer equipment.    Yahyaoui, who uses the pseudonym "Ettounsi" ("Tunisian"), set up the site in July last year to put out news about the fight for democracy and freedom in Tunisia. He published opposition material online and was one of the first people to circulate a letter from his uncle, Judge Makhar Yahyaoui, to President Ben Ali criticising the country's legal system. During the 26 May referendum on the Constitution, TUNeZINE staged its own online referendum asking readers if they thought Tunisia was "a republic, a kingdom, a zoo or a prison?" From 26 to 28 May, it held a forum on the government's referendum and the state of the country's opposition which drew a very large number of participants. The website has been censured by the authorities from the start. But each week a list of "proxy" addresses has been available so Tunisians could get round the blockage and access the site. A few hours after Yahyaoui's arrest, the site had vanished from the Internet, reportedly because police forced him to reveal the access code to it. The authorities have not told his family or lawyers what has happened to him and say they have no trace of him. Reporters Without Borders notes that over the past six months in Tunisia, one journalist has been jailed, two physically attacked, two publications seized and two others suspended.