Yesterday, a twenty-minute interview was broadcast featuring Tunisian Interim President Moncef Marzouki and Julian Assange, the famed activist and founder of Wikileaks.
The interview is the third installment of part of the controversial TV program “Julian Calendar: The World Tomorrow,” which airs on Russia Today (RT) – a Russian television news network. Assange interviewed Marzouki by video uplink, as he is currently under house arrest in England while waiting for a verdict in his extradition hearing for sexual assault charges in Sweden.
Moncef Marzouki has been interim president of Tunisia since he was elected by the Constituent Assembly in December. A doctor by trade, Marzouki spent much of the last twenty years speaking out against the human rights abuses of former president of Tunisia Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. He was the head of the Tunisian League of Human Rights and the National Council for Freedoms in Tunisia (Conseil national pour les libertés en Tunisie), and founded his own political party, the Congress for the Republic, in 2001.
While Marzouki has critics on both the left and the right, popular support for him remains strong, with the latest poll showing 78% of Tunisians trust him.
Both Marzouki and Assange are activists – Assange was quick to make reference to to their common experience of solitary confinement. But Assange didn’t spare Marzouki, particularly when it came to questions of freedom of information. Assange pointedly asked the Tunisan president about the blocking of select websites on Tunisian internet. In response, Marzouki expressed his conviction that Internet censorship in general is “useless and counterproductive,” but did not directly address the security measures Assange asked about.
Further pressing the topic of information freedom, Assange asked Marzouki whether the archives of the Tunisian government will one day be opened, to which Marzouki responded that it would be open, but “to historians only.” The Tunisian president told Assange that no pressure had been exerted on him to keep access to the archives private.
On topics of human rights, Marzouki and Assange were able to find more common ground. Marzouki stated that torture would never be used again. In regards to the detention of Baghdadi Mahmoudi, Libya’s former prime minister, who remains in Tunisian custody in spite of being acquitted of all criminal charges levied against him in Tunisia, Marzouki explained that he is not being released to Libya in order to guarantee him a fair trial.
When questioned about the democratic transition and concerns regarding the rise of Islamism in Tunisia, Marzouki denied that Islamism as practiced by Ennahdha and by parties in Egypt would undermine the growth of democracy. He argued that Islamists are now a part of the democratic system and that they and their views must be respected.
Marzouki and Assange later discussed Tunisia’s stance regarding the situation in Syria. “It is our responsibility to fight for democracy,” Marzouki stated, expressing his unequivocal support for the struggle of the Syrian people against dictatorship and corruption. Interestingly, Marzouki described his own offer of asylum to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as “not credible,” as he didn’t expect Assad to take him up on it.
Marzouki expressed his admiration for Assange’s work, and concluded the interview by stating that he would “always stick to [his] values and opinions.”
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