Tight rein on speech in Tunisia

By NBC News staff and wire reports

An international rights group called Monday for Tunisian prosecutors to drop charges against two sculptors for artworks deemed harmful to public order and good morals, a legal action seen as part of a clampdown on free speech in the country where the Arab Spring began.

Human Rights Watch said that the prosecution of artists Nadia Jelassi and Mohamed Ben Salem in Tunisia, the country whose protests against its longtime dictator helped set off similar uprisings across the Arab world, violated the right to freedom of expression because the works did not incite or discriminate.

"Time and again, prosecutors are using criminal legislation to stifle critical or artistic expression," Eric Goldstein, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

"Bloggers, journalists and now artists are being prosecuted for exercising their right to free speech," he added.

Protests The works by Jelassi and Ben Salem were exhibited in a show in La Marsa in June, according to Human Rights Watch. The two, whose mixed-media work provoked protests during the exhibition, face up to five years in prison if convicted, the rights group said.

La Marsa is a coastal town north of the capital Tunis.

Jelassi's contribution was a work titled "Celui qui n'a pas " ("He who hasn't "). It includes sculptures of veiled women amid a pile of stones. Ben Salems work showed ants coming out of a child's schoolbag to spell the word "Allah," or God, according to Human Rights Watch.

Mother of Tunisian fruit vendor who sparked Arab Spring is arrested

In addition to protests outside the center, several works of art in the exhibition reportedly were damaged.

Go here to see the original:
Tight rein on speech in Tunisia