While the Tunisian authorities did all they could to prevent civil society events outside the Kram exhibition centre, on Wednesday 16 November civil society activists succeeded in getting the upper hand against state repression. A press conference to announce the cancellation of the Citizens Summit transformed into a major human rights event.

When civil society activists and journalists moved from the official WSIS Kram centre to the offices of the Tunisian Human Rights League on Wednesday afternoon – the day of the opening of the WSIS summit – they didn't know what to expect. All earlier meetings and press conferences outside the official summit area had been forcefully prevented by Tunisian police and secret service. What they found, however, was a room packed with international journalists, civil society and government delegates,

As host country of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), Tunisia has not lived up to the optimistic expectations of some UN officials, but in stead exceeded the worst expectations of civil society. Many individuals searched their souls whether to attend the Summit or not. But the promise of a Citizens Summit, dedicated to the human rights demands of civil society and inclusive of the Tunisian people and organisations purposefully excluded by the Tunisian government, convinced many of them to come to Tunis and mingle amongst the 23.000 official participants.

In an opinion article titled 'No place to talk about Internet freedom' for the International Herald Tribune, Kamel Labidi, the former director of Amnesty International-Tunisia, describes Tunisia as "one of the Arabs

A broad coalition of human rights organisations has announced they will organise a Citizens' Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, from 16 to 18 November 2005, to coincide with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

Citizens groups, civil society organisations, national, regional and international institutions, government delegations and all other interested parties and individuals are invited to participate in the Citizen's Summit on the Information Society.

The CSIS program will consist of a series of panels and conferences addressing main WSIS issues from the public perspective. CSIS aims to first of all send a strong message of support and solidarity from the international civil society to the local civil society and citizens in Tunisia. Secondly, CSIS wants to offer a specific civil society perspective on the main issues debated at the WSIS. In the first phase, in Geneva in 2003, thanks also to constant pressure from civil society, the conference focussed on human rights and social justice as cornerstones of the Information Society.

Today the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has launched a new 18 month panel on terrorism, counter-terrorism and human rights. "The legal community worldwide must now take a leadership role in articulating how the rule of law can be respected in addressing terrorism in its many complex global and local forms." The ICJ has formulated 10 legal and policy issues the panel should address. One of them addresses the issue of blanket electronic surveillance: "Do we need to have intrusive surveillance of public places and transports, data on travel, phone calls and Internet use in order to protect people from terrorism?" Other issues are freedom of speech (How can we criminalise incitement to violence without eroding freedom of speech, the press and religion?), discrimination (how to increase security without discriminating,

Only twenty minutes were needed in the Spanish court of Seville in order to acquit the Spanish game programmer who was facing up to one year in prison for making a video-game that made fun of religious practices (see EDRI-Gram 3.19). After showing repent, and stating that his intention was not really to offend anyone, the judge decided to acquit him.

The case generated considerable interest outside of Spain. Up to Japan people created mirrors to download the game.

EDRI-gram 3.19, Spanish gaming programmer faces prison sentence
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number3.19/gaming

(Contribution by David Casacuberta, EDRI-member CPSR-Spain)

The third Preparatory Committee (PrepCom-3) of the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) closed its doors Friday night 30 September 2005 after what ITU describes as "two weeks of day and night sessions that saw agreement on large sections of the Summit text, but ultimately disappointing progress on a raft of contentious issues."

A lot of international media attention was given to the debate about Internet governance between the EU and the US. After the Geneva phase of the WSIS, accommodating the claims from many delegations of the developing world for new management and oversight mechanisms, a multi-stakeholder Working Group on Internet Governance was set up. While the US remained firmly in support of the status quo, on 28 September the UK delegation, speaking on behalf of the European Union, tabled a radical proposal to create a new, multi-stakeholder forum to develop public policy. The proposal specifically addressed the need for international government involvement in the policies for allocation of IP addressing blocks and procedures for changing the root zone file to provide for insertion of new top-level domain names and changes of country-code top level domain name (ccTLDs) managers. With eight proposals now tabled, informal consultations – excluding the participation of civil society, will continue to be held from now until the prior-Summit meeting in Tunis.

A number of civil society groups present at the WSIS PrepCom in Geneva have written an open letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. "Since we learned that the second phase of the Summit would take place in Tunisia, we have expressed serious concerns over the violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Tunisian authorities. Today, shortly before the holding of the Summit, we unfortunately must note that there has been no improvement and that we have recently even witnessed a serious deterioration of fundamental freedoms."

The letter sums up an impressive number of human rights infringements in Tunisia recently and asks the Secretary General to do everything in his power to make Tunisia respect international human rights standards.

The letter is signed by over a 100 civil society organisations, including many EDRI members. The letter states:

On 12 and 13 September the Council of Europe convened a Pan-European Forum on "Human Rights in the Information Society: Responsible Behaviour by Key Actors" with representatives from state, industry and civil society.

The Forum was a follow-up to the recent Declaration of the Committee of Ministers on Human Rights and the Rule of Law in the Information Society, plus general Council of Europe priorities regarding the protection of children and internet content. The Forum aimed at identifying and discussing "responsible" and "irresponsible" behaviour by key actors and how states, industry and civil society can work together (inter alia through partnerships, policy making, greater awareness and education) to ensure the promotion and protection of human rights in the Information Society. On behalf of EDRI, Meryem Marzouki (IRIS, France) and Rikke Frank