Tunisia: Censorship Continues as Wikileaks Cables Make the Rounds

Tunileaks – a project by Nawaat

Tunisian activists pounced on the latest Wikileaks US Embassy Cables, dedicating a new website to republish and discuss the revelations related to their country. Tunileaks, was launched by Nawaat one hour after the whistle-blowing site unleashed the cables on Sunday, November 28th.

The first release contained 17 cables issued from the US Embassy in Tunisia. The majority of these cables show the exchanges between the embassy and the US State Department. The classified documents were transmitted between May 28th, 2008, and February 9th, 2010. Two of the documents were written by the present Ambassador Gordon Gray whereas the remaining 15 were by his predecessor.

They mainly dealt with the neglect of human rights in Tunisia and the restrictions on freedom of expression. On Twitter, the hashtag #tunileaks was created. There, people shared different secrets revealed by the site.

Secret prisons and torture revealed in Tunisia

.

The documents also reveal personal secrets about the ruling family and their close circle.

I didn't know that Sakhr Materi has a tiger at home.

The Tunisian government, known for its restriction on freedom of expression, rapidly blocked the access to Tunileaks. They first blocked http://tunileaks.appspot.com/ ( without the https). One day later, they blocked Google App Engine's IP address (209.85.229.141) in order to block Tunileaks under https, making appspot.com partially unavailable in the country .

No , they have censored appspot.com because of #tunileaks.
Let them block #tunileaks + Nawaat appspot.com proxies. They will block Gmail and Google search #tunisia.

Even the electronic version of the Lebanese newspaper ‘Al akhbar’ has been censored in Tunisia after the publication of some cables released by Tunileaks.

The Lebanese newspaper ‘Al Akhbar’ publishes new cables released by Tunileaks, this is why it is censored in Tunisia today.

Will more of the Tunisian cyberspace become restricted as more cables and secrets are revealed and published?

5 comments

Cancel this reply

Join the conversation -> Hellno

Authors, please log in »

Guidelines

  • All comments are reviewed by a moderator. Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
  • Please treat others with respect. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.