Monthly Archives: May 2017

He has shown little ability to learn in office. But a health-care deal with some Democratic support might not be completely out of the question.CreditPHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL REYNOLDS / POOL / GETTY

Every President is surprised, at the beginning of his term, at how difficult it is to move legislation through Congress, but Donald Trump seems not to have known even the most rudimentary facts about the legislative system before assuming office. He claimed in February that nobody knew that health-care reform could be so complicated. Last month, Trump and his aides seemed surprised that the Freedom Caucus, a group of some forty right-wing House Republicans, defeated the first Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, despite the fact that the Freedom Caucus has played a starring role in every congressional battle for the past several years, regularly torpedoing the plans of Republican leaders. And Trump seems to have been only dimly aware of the Senate filibuster, which can only be broken with sixty votes.

While Republicans have majorities in both chambers of Congress, the Freedom Caucus in the House and the filibuster in the Senate mean that they have to win at least some Democratic votes to pass most of Trumps agenda. As dysfunctional as Congress seems, it wont always be impossible. This week, Congress negotiated a spending bill to keep the government running, which will pass with bipartisan support in the House and Senate. Democrats and Republicans were both able to spin the deal as a victory for their party. No wall, no deportation force, no defunding sanctuary cities, no Planned Parenthood cut, none of Trumps proposed eighteen billion dollars in non-defense cuts, a top Democratic aide wrote atop a long list of other victories. At the same time, House Speaker Paul Ryan, in a press conference on Tuesday, bragged that Republicans were able to secure more in defense spending than Democrats received in domestic discretionary spending.

But on health care Trump and Ryan have handed over negotiations to the Freedom Caucus, which killed the first Obamacare repeal bill. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, negotiated a more conservative repeal bill with Ryan and Tom MacArthur, one of the three chairman of the moderate Tuesday Group. The final product, which as of this afternoon was still a few votes short of passing the House, has infuriated several Tuesday Group members.

MacArthur really got himself in trouble on this, a member of the group told me. We had a discussion: Should we be negotiating with the Freedom Caucus on this? And our membership said no. He went on, MacArthur went out and he said he was only speaking on his own behalf, and he ended up negotiating an amendment that only brought Freedom Caucus guys over. So who the hell was he representing? Its crazy. Suffice to say the members are furious with him.

Ryan and Trumps decision to accede to the Freedom Caucuss demands makes some sense. Their goal is to get any bill they can to the Senate. But, even if they succeed in passing the Meadows-MacArthur bill in the House, they may run into the buzz saw of the Freedom Caucus later. Senate Republicans will need to rewrite the bill to win over moderate members of the Party, and a conference committee of House and Senate members will make its own changesall of which are likely to turn off purists like Meadows, who will have a another opportunity to kill the bill before it reaches Trump. When asked by USA Today how much the Senate could change the Freedom Caucus-endorsed bill and still garner votes from its members, Dave Brat, a Freedom Caucus member from Virginia, responded, Not at allnone.

So how do Republicans pass health-care legislation when they lose the Freedom Caucus? The answer, of course, is to win over Democrats, as they did with the spending bill.

There are obvious reasons to be skeptical that a bipartisan fix for Obamacare could ever pass Congress. But, as complicated as health care is, Democrats and Republicans actually agree on the basics. Both sides accept the current employer-based insurance system, which covers some hundred and sixty million Americans, and the use of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Obamacare exchanges to cover everyone else. Both sides recognize that neither Democratic plans to replace the employer-based system with a single-payer one nor Republican ones to scrap it and replace it with individual tax credits are politically feasible.

The two sides have been discussing a few specific compromises for years, even before Obamacare passed, in 2010. Liberal and conservative policy wonks both like the idea of taxing health benefits to help ratchet down costs, though neither side wants to deal with the political consequences of taxing such benefits. You could get bipartisan agreement on bringing discipline to the employer system if both sides were willing to take political blame, James C. Capretta, a health-care-policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said.

There are other possible deals to be struck. On Medicaid, Republicans could accept Obamas expansion of the systemas several Republican governors have donein return for some reforms, perhaps lowering the income threshold for eligibility, which Obamacare set at a hundred and thirty-eight per cent of the federal poverty level.

Then there are the insurance-market regulations. Theres bipartisan support for the most popular ones, such as the requirement that insurers cover individuals with prexisting conditions (which the Meadows-MacArthur bill would undermine). But less popular regulations, such as the mandate that individuals buy health insurance, might be massaged. The Democrats require Americans who dont buy insurance to pay a tax. The Republicans want to allow insurers to charge more if an individual has a gap in coverage. They are actually not that far apart, Capretta said. They both say if someone hasnt been insured they shouldnt be penalized on their health status. And they both want to penalize people for dropping out of the insurance market. One of the most surprising aspects of the G.O.P.s effort to repeal and replace Obamacare is how many of the laws basic features Republicans have come to accept.

If the current effort to pass a bill with only Republican votes fails, Trump will have a major decision to make. He has shown little ability to learn in office, and almost none to master policy details. But if Ryan and McConnell agreed to lead the effort, a health-care deal with some Democratic support might not be completely out of the question.

Youd have to say were not getting the Freedom Caucus, one of Trumps advisers told me. Right now, they are holding us by the short hairs. Youd have to say, O.K., were going to go with the Democrats so that Mark Meadows cannot be Mr. Veto. Thats the fundamental decision. If this goes down, they have shown you that the far right cannot generate anything and that going with the far right is a failure over and over again.

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How Trump Could Ditch the Freedom Caucus and Pass a Bipartisan Health-Care Bill - The New Yorker

I heard a report this morning on BBC Newshour on the shortage of dentists in Ivory Coast (Cote dIvoire). I cant find the report at the Newshour website, but heres something similar from CNBCAfrica, coauthored by a Unilever representative. Its a sad story of disease, pain, and school absenteeism.

But stories like this miss the point. Why does Ivory Coast have so few dentists? Why does the Gates Foundation need to buy mosquito nets for African countries? Its not because theres something special about dentists and mosquito nets. Its because African countries are poor. And theyre poor because they lack freedom, property rights, markets, and the rule of law.

Take Cote dIvoire. In the 2016 Economic Freedom of the World Report, Cote dIvoire ranks 133rd in the world for economic freedom. On page 66 of this pdf version, we see that it rates particularly badly on Legal System and Property Rights. You cant generate much economic growth if you dont have secure property rights and the rule of law. It also rates badly on regulatory barriers to trade and capital controls.

On the broader Human Freedom Index, we see on page 63 that Cote dIvoire also rates low for freedom of domestic movement, political pressure on the media, and procedural, criminal, and civil justice.

African countries have severe tariff and nontariff barriers to free trade, reducing the benefits they can gain from specialization and the division of labor, even among sub-Saharan countries themselves.

The long-term way to get more dentists and mosquito nets in Africa is not Western aid or charity, its freedom and growth. Those who want Africa and Africans to have better lives need to encourage African countries to move toward the rule of law, free trade, property rights, and open markets.

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Dentists and Freedom in Ivory Coast - Cato Institute (blog)

On the campaign trail, President Trump promised to protect religious liberty. Republicans in Congress are pressing him to make good on the promise.

In early April, 18 U.S. senators Florida Republican Marco Rubio among them urged the president to sign an executive order that would require agencies of the federal government to respect religious freedom.

That order would reportedly reverse former President Barack Obamas orders prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians in the federal work force or by federal contractors.

USA Today reported that a group of 51 House members wrote Trump to request that you sign the draft executive order on religious liberty, as reported by numerous outlets on February 2, 2017, in order to protect millions of Americans whose religious freedom has been attacked or threatened over the last eight years.

After a draft copy of the order was leaked, the White House said Trump had no plans to sign such an order.

Adding to the intrigue, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, domestic policy chair of the presidents transition team, said in late February in an interview on SiriusXM Progress that the religious freedom order is very much on the way.

Should Trump issue the religious freedom order that congressional Republicans are seeking?

For opposing views, we asked two Central Floridians steeped in the issue:

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Should Trump protect religious freedom? - Orlando Sentinel

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

I believe that God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom. So said President George W. Bush in 2004. Leave for another day the debate over whether such a belief is more hopeful than realistic. What we do know: Tyrants and terrorists around the world are persecuting, torturing and slaughtering those whose hearts do desire freedom even the most basic.

Last week, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) issued its annual report covering 37 countries. Thomas Reese, USCIRFs chair, minced no words: The Commission has concluded that the state of affairs for international religious freedom is worsening in both the depth and breadth of violations.

USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan federal government commission. Its task: to monitor religious freedom around the world and offer recommendations to Congress, the secretary of state and the president. Its nine unpaid commissioners are appointed either by the White House or congressional leaders. I currently serve as a commissioner. Let me add: Any opinions expressed in this column are mine, not necessarily those of USCIRF.

As I see it, religious freedom is the seed that must be planted in order for other liberties to have a chance to grow. Governments that fail to secure the natural right to believe (or not believe) as ones conscience dictates, and to worship (or not worship) as one chooses will always repress other liberties freedom of expression, association and assembly among them.

The International Religious Freedom Act, passed in 1998, requires the U.S. government to designate the most egregious violators of religious freedom as countries of particular concern (CPCs). The State Department currently designates 10 CPCs. USCIRFs new report recommends adding six more.

There are an additional 12 countries on USCIRFs Tier 2 list. The rulers of those lands flagrantly violate religious freedom, though not or at least not yet on the level of the CPCs. You wont be surprised to learn that Turkey has been added to that list.

We might call this an embarrassment of wretchedness more nations than the commission can comfortably monitor, certainly more than I can talk about in one column. So let me just hit a few of the lowlights.

The new USCIRF report urges the secretary of State to designate Russia a CPC because new Russian laws have effectively criminalized religious speech not authorized by the state. Most recently, Russia banned the Jehovahs Witnesses, accusing the group of posing a threat to the rights of citizens, public order and public security. Thats both unfair and puzzling: The Jehovahs Witnesses are avowedly apolitical and pacifist.

In China, Uighur Muslims, the Falun Gong and Tibetan Buddhists are among those being persecuted and whose members have been tortured. Last year, in the words of the USCIRF report, Authorities evicted thousands of monks and nuns from the Larung Gar Buddhist Institute in Tibet before demolishing their homes. The Panchen Lama, who should serve as one of the leaders of Tibetan Buddhists, was abducted by the Chinese government when he was six years old. April 25 was his 28th birthday and almost nothing is known about him not even where he is.

In Iran, the most disfavored religious minority is the Bahai, though Christians and Sunni Muslims also are subject to prolonged detention, torture and executions. Since the election of moderate President Hassan Rouhani in 2013, the number of individuals from religious minority communities who are in prison because of their beliefs has increased. Let me introduce you to one: Maryam Naghash Zargaran. A teacher in an orphanage, she dared convert from Islam to Christianity. In 2013, a Revolutionary Court convicted her for propagating against the Islamic regime and collusion intended to harm national security. Shes been incarcerated and mistreated ever since.

In Pakistan, at least 40 individuals have been sentenced to death or are serving life sentences for blasphemy. And in Saudi Arabia, the courts continue to prosecute and imprison individuals for dissent, apostasy, and blasphemy, and a law classifying blasphemy and the promotion of atheism as terrorism has been used to target human rights defenders, among others. Just last week, Ahmad Al-Shamri, a Saudi who declared himself an atheist, was sentenced to death.

A complicating factor with which USCIRF is attempting to grapple: When dealing with political Islam, where does the politics end and the religion begin? To cite one example: In Azerbaijan, a Shia-majority country, the Shia Imam Taleh Bagirov was last year sentenced to prison. Have his human rights been violated? I think so. Has he acted out of religious conviction or political ambition? Thats less clear. And if, as I suspect, he is a follower of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolutionary founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, arent those concepts inextricable?

Finally, there was this new and distressing development last year: The State Department and both houses of Congress officially recognized that a genocidal war was being waged by the Islamic State against Christians, Yazidis and some Muslim communities as well.

There is no more lethal threat to religious liberty than genocide. Religious communities can endure oppression for centuries and then flourish again when the jackboot is lifted. But extermination is forever.

USCIRFs commissioners have voted to make genocide a priority; to begin to consider how genocide might be more effectively addressed by the United States and what we call, perhaps more hopefully than realistically, the international community.

Military force is now being used to dislodge the Islamic State from the lands it had conquered. Thats necessary. But much more will need to be done if the ancient religious minorities of the Middle East are to make it out of this decade alive.

Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a columnist for The Washington Times.

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Religious freedom attacked on all sides - Washington Times

By Michael J. Abramowitz and Arch Puddington By Michael J. Abramowitz and Arch Puddington May 2 at 9:00 AM

Global press freedom has long been in decline and is now at its lowest point in the past 13 years, according to Freedom Houses latest assessment, released last week. What is new, and especially disquieting, are the mounting pressures on the media in the United States, including sharp attacks on reporters by the Trump administration. This raises the question of whether Americawill continue to serve as a model for other countries.

The United States remains an oasis, one of the few places in the world where aggressive journalistic investigation can be practiced with few legal restrictions and little physical danger to reporters. But even here, press freedom has been weakening for some time, well before the inauguration of Donald Trump.

Recent administrations have battled the press, even threatening some reporters with jail time for refusing to identify sources. An entire news organization (Gawker) was wiped out because of a successful lawsuit funded by a billionaire. Meanwhile, outlets that profess to be legitimate news media but are in fact propaganda instruments hold the ideals of neutrality and honest reporting in disdain.

Since Trumps rise to the presidency, however, matters have taken a turn for the worse. The new White House derides and belittles journalists and media organizations in the hope of undermining the credibility of the press. In so doing, the administration is aggressively promoting the notion that nuance and facts are irrelevant a staple concept of Russian information warfare.

No president in recent memory has forged a record of such unrelenting scorn for the media, and at such an early stage in an administration, as has President Trump. In so doing, the administration provides welcome ammunition to those in other countries working both to destroy independent media in their own societies and to undermine the principle that freedom of thought and open access to information are the rights of all people, everywhere.

Russia and China represent the vanguard in the war against press freedom worldwide. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have intensified restrictions on their own journalists, leading to a string of murders in Russia and prosecutions in China. Both governments have also tried to shape the global media environment through propaganda and, in the case of China, a campaign to destroy the very concept of a global Internet. Its harder for the United States to meaningfully condemn such actions if its administration maintains that fact-based journalists are the enemy of the American people.

Authoritarian rulers in countries as diverse as Venezuela, Turkey and Ethiopia are mimicking the Moscow-Beijing playbook, throwing reporters in jail, subjecting them to violence, and suppressing Internet freedom and social media. In all these cases, Trump and his entourage have either remained silent or actively abetted bad behavior. (Turkey, to name but one example, now accounts for one-third of the worlds imprisoned journalists yet that didnt stop Trump from congratulating Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his recent victory in a constitutional referendum that entailed a broad crackdown on the media.)

Equally disturbing are recent setbacks in democracies such as Hungary and Poland, where the decline in press freedom has been accomplished with remarkable speed. Polands Law and Justice party government is systematically undermining the independent media, asserting control over public broadcasters. In Hungary, the ruling Fidesz party has gradually warped the media sector in its favor through politicized ownership changes and the closure of critical outlets. Both countries, members of the European Union and NATO, are allies of the United States. Yet Washington is doing nothing to make its influence felt.

The United States will not necessarily follow the path of those faltering democracies, much less of Russia and China. Compared with many other democracies, the United States has stronger constitutional guarantees of press freedom and freedom of speech, and more robust legislative and judicial systems with records of independence in the face of executive overreach.

The danger is that the new U.S. leadership may, in effect, be offering a license to governments elsewhere that have cracked down on the media as part of a more ambitious authoritarian strategy. There is little doubt that autocrats everywhere are watching what the United States does and what its new president says. The duty of the press is to hold government accountable, not be its spokesperson or propaganda arm. The government has a duty to respect that obligation.

When political figures in the United States deride the media for helping citizens hold their government accountable, they encourage foreign leaders with autocratic goals to do the same. When U.S. officials step back from promoting democracy and press freedom, journalists beyond American shores feel the chill. A weakening of press freedom in the United States would be a setback for freedom everywhere.

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How Trump is undermining press freedom around the world - Washington Post

Commutes are frustrating because they make us feel like we dont have any control. Youre either trapped on a bus or train, or trapped in a car crawling along the freeway. But if you focus on what you can control, your time heading to and from work can become the best, most enriching parts of your day.

To make the most of your commute, researchers at Harvard Business Review suggest you look at that travel time from a different perspective. It doesnt have to be the waste you might see it as. You may be confined while you go from home to work and vice versa, but the time itself is still yours. Yours to read a book, or listen to a podcast, or better yet, treat it as Ph.D. candidate Jon M. Jachimowiczs great-aunt would call a pocket of freedom:

We borrowed the phrase pocket of freedom from Adela, the great-aunt of one of us (Jon), whose early adult years were spent in various Polish ghettos during the Nazi occupation. No matter how hungry, tired, or frightened she was, she devoted one hour each night to a creative activity with her niecea practice that, she later noted, helped her persevere. Though the stakes in a commute to work are much less significant, you, too, can make the time more bearable by thinking of it as an opportunity to pursue your passions.

Adelas coping strategy, while born from a far greater struggle than any commute, is still useful advice for the rest of us, and is supported by science. Research has suggested a correlation between higher levels of autonomy and greater well-being for years. Being able to choose how you use your time often leads to greater satisfaction, productivity, and lower stress levels throughout the day. Its not so much about what you do with these pockets, you see, its that you choose to take control and do something.

Every commute is an opportunity, so start looking at it as a blessing and not a curse. Youve been given a small chunk of freedom to be creative, pursue a passion, learn a new skill, or listen to some soothing music so you can decompress before going home to a busy family. How will you use your pockets of freedom?

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Find Your "Pocket of Freedom" to Make Long Commutes More Bearable - Lifehacker

Getty Images | Chris Clor

Nine Republican US senators yesterday submitted legislation that would prohibitthe Federal Communications Commission from ever againusing the regulatory authority that allowed the commission to imposenet neutrality rules.The "Restoring Internet Freedom Act" would prohibit the FCC from classifying ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act and "from imposing certain regulations on providers of such service."

The Internet "is threatened by the Federal Communications Commissions 2015 Open Internet Order, which would put federal bureaucrats in charge of engineering the Internets infrastructure," Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). said in an announcement yesterday. "That is why I am introducing the Restoring Internet Freedom Act, which would nullify [the] Open Internet Order and prohibit the FCC from issuing a similar rule in the future.

Lee's bill was co-sponsored bySens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), and James Inhofe (R-Ok.). In the announcement, Cruz repeated his charge that net neutrality is "Obamacare for the Internet."

The full bill text isn't available yet, but itappears to be identical to another one proposedlast year. That bill would have prohibited the FCC from issuinga new net neutrality rule"unless the rule is specifically authorized by a law enacted after enactment of this Act." There was also an "Internet Freedom Act" to wipe out net neutrality rules in 2015.

The FCC attempted to impose net neutrality rules without using its Title II authority in 2010, but Verizon sued and the rules were struck down in court. The FCC finally was able to impose net neutrality rules that were upheld in courtafter reclassifying ISPs as common carriers. Among other things, the rules prohibit ISPs from blocking, throttling, or prioritizing Internet websites and applications in exchange for payment. The latest court decision upholding the current net neutrality rules was alsoissued yesterday.

Meanwhile, the FCC's new Republican chairman, Ajit Pai, has proposed overturning the Title II classification and net neutrality rules in his own "Restoring Internet Freedom" plan.Some Republicans in Congress support net neutrality legislationthat wouldban blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization of Internet traffic without using Title II. But from what we know about Lee's bill so far, it appears the proposal wouldn't impose any typeof net neutrality rules to replace the current ones.

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GOP's Internet Freedom Act permanently guts net neutrality authority - Ars Technica

Oh, please.

The ignorant, insular snowflakes on college campuses who want to banish conservative speakers are a piddly threat to American liberty.

The hand-wringing and pearl-clutching on the political right about the lefty activists who object to their schools providing a forum to conservative provocateurs is preposterously out of scale to the danger these activists actually pose to the First Amendment.

Snarky firebrand Ann Coulter should have been allowed to speak as scheduled at the University of California at Berkeley, agreed. And the frightening, stifling campus protests to which other conservative speakers have been subjected are inexcusable, particularly at institutions supposedly dedicated to inquiry and freedom of thought.

But come out from under the covers. Put on some fresh trousers. The vast majority of liberal politicians and pundits deplore this sort of suppression, which remains geographically quite limited. Rascals and rabble rousers from all across the political spectrum still have countless venues for expression, and those who wish to enjoy the vile ramblings of, say, Milo Yiannopolous, have no shortage of opportunity online.

The right dominates talk radio and cable chat, and Republicans control every branch of government at the federal level.

Freedom of conservative speech is very, very safe.

A better argument can be made that it's President Donald Trump and the GOP who are the true threats to American liberty.

On March 30, Trump tweeted "The failing @nytimes has disgraced the media world. Gotten me wrong for two solid years. Change libel laws?" This echoed what he'd promised a year earlier on the campaign trail, "I'm going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money."

The laws on the books say a public figure must establish that a media outlet acted with "actual malice" in order to prove libel. Relaxing that standard would have a deeply chilling effect not only on major media outlets but also everyday citizens, since social media has turned all of us into publishers.

In fact, the chilling effect would be greatest on everyday citizens, since so few have armies of lawyers to defend themselves against aggrieved politicians.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said Sunday that pursuing such a change to the definition of libel "is something that is being looked at" by the Trump administration.

In the same interview on ABC's "This Week," Priebus was asked about a related Trump tweet on Nov. 29: "Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag if they do, there must be consequences perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!"

"It's something that, again, is probably going to get looked at," Priebus said. "Our flag should be protected, and it's Donald Trump that talks about that issue. And you know what? It's a 70 percent issue in this country. He wins every day and twice on Sunday on our flag."

Not quite. The most recent scientific poll I could find, a 2011 survey by the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University and the Newseum, found just 39 percent support for a constitutional amendment to overrule the Supreme Court's finding that burning an American flag in protest is protected expression.

Yes, it's a form of expression that deeply offends many people. So is the sneering, sexist, racist claptrap from would-be campus orators. On principle I defend both forms of expression. But only the former is under threat by the president of the United States.

Fortunately, Trump's impulses to amend the Constitution to clamp down on the media and on other forms of expression he detests will be thwarted by the difficulty of passing such amendments absent an overwhelming national political consensus. Deep breaths, everyone. Free speech is safe.

For genuine threats to the core values of our democratic republic, however, you need look no further than the relentless, state-by-state efforts of the GOP to suppress minority voting. Just last month, a federal judge invalidated Texas' 2011 voter identification law on the grounds that the intent of legislators was to discriminate against black and Hispanic voters, not to combat almost nonexistent in-person voter fraud.

Similarly, a federal court struck down North Carolina's voter ID law last summer, writing that the statute targeted "African-Americans with almost surgical precision" due to the legislature's blatant "concern that African-Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, had too much access to the franchise."

Shame on the those who try to deny provocative speakers the right to speak to willing campus audiences. But really. The threat they pose to liberty pales next to those engaged in campaigns of voter suppression as our peevish president hungrily looks to carve up the Constitution.

Twitter @EricZorn

Related articles:

Mr. President, come out of your safe space

The threat Donald Trump poses to democracy is not overblown

What Donald Trump is doing isn't normal

Can Donald Trump save his failing presidency?

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Trump and GOP, not campus radicals, pose the real threat to freedom - Chicago Tribune

Twenty-five associations, including the Tunisian Press Syndicate, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Amnesty International, said they were "deeply concerned" about the creation of a regulatory body for audiovisual communication (AFP Photo/FETHI BELAID)

Tunis (AFP) - Tunisian and international non-governmental organisations warned Tuesday of deteriorating freedom of the press in a country considered to be a rare success story of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.

"The Tunisian government these past weeks has not stopped tightening its grip on the press," they said in a joint statement published on World Press Freedom Day.

Twenty-five associations, including the Tunisian Press Syndicate, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Amnesty International, said they were "deeply concerned" about the creation of a regulatory body for audiovisual communication.

Six years after a popular uprising toppled longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the rights groups expressed concern about the recent banning of a small daily publication.

"It's the first time since the end of the dictatorship... that a newspaper is banned in this way," they said.

The Tunisian authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Tunisian media was largely silenced under Ben Ali.

But the 2011 uprising gave rise to unprecedented freedom of expression in Tunisia. The country ranked first in North Africa in RSF's latest World Press Freedom Index.

Amnesty also published a separate statement on Tuesday in which it urged Tunisia to "demonstrate its commitment to human rights", especially in stemming torture and gender-based discrimination.

"While Tunisia has made some progress on opening up political and civil space and some legislative reforms have been introduced, the security sector has remained largely unchanged and in recent years there has been a resurgence of violations committed with impunity," said Heba Morayef, Amnesty's North Africa research director.

The UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday reviewed the human rights situation in Tunisia for the first time since 2012.

"This review comes at a critical moment for Tunisia," said Morayef.

"It provides a crucial opportunity to take stock of where Tunisia's transition stands in terms of human rights reforms six years on from the uprising and in the face of ongoing security challenges."

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Alarm over worsening press freedom in Tunisia - Yahoo News