A Tunisian Journalist Speaks Out: How Persecution by Tunisian Authorities Drove Him Into Exile

Daoud is a Tunisian journalist and blogger who spoke to Skyline International for Human Rights (SIHR) anonymously, fearing retaliation against his family, who remain in Tunisia. He has been living in exile for roughly two years, not because he planned to leave, but because the night security agents searched his family home in June 2022 effectively became the last time he could safely return. He has not been arrested. He has not been charged with any crime. There is no case file, no court date, and no sentence. And yet he cannot go home.

Writing Critically, Then Paying the Price

Daoud had been writing critically about Tunisian President Kais Saied on Facebook, expressing political views that put him at odds with a government that had been showing, from the earliest days of Saied's consolidation of power, that it had little tolerance for dissent online. In June 2022, while he was outside Tunisia participating in a radio training programme, security agents in civilian clothing raided his family home in Tamghza, in the Tozeur governorate in southern Tunisia. No judicial warrant was presented. The house was searched. His mother, elderly and living alone, was left to deal with the intrusion of security agents going through her home without any legal basis for doing so.

Members of the National Guard later returned to question her specifically about her son's journalism. She had received no formal summons. There was no lawyer present. At some point during that interrogation, she was told that Daoud was subject to a travel ban. Nothing was ever put in writing.

Daoud, who had been abroad when the raid took place, did not return. What had begun as a trip outside the country became an exile he did not choose.

"I believe I was among the first journalists and bloggers targeted during the early period following President Kais Saied."

The raid happened before Decree-Law No. 54, the legislation that criminalised online expression and that authorities have since used to prosecute and imprison journalists across Tunisia, was even enacted. There was no law invoked, no warrant shown, no charge brought. What happened to Daoud and his family was not a legal process. It was a warning, delivered through the people he loved, designed to be felt without leaving a paper trail.

Silenced Without a Single Charge

In the months and years that followed the raid, Daoud kept a very low profile, not because he had moved on from what happened but because speaking out felt like a risk he could not ask his mother to bear. Every time he considered speaking, he had to weigh what further attention might bring down on her.

"I remained silent publicly for a long period because I feared for my elderly mother, who lives alone in Tunisia."

For journalists facing this kind of pressure, the silence that follows is not a side effect of the intimidation but exactly what it was designed to produce. The raid, the interrogation of his mother, and the unwritten travel ban, all of it pushed Daoud into self-censorship, forcing him to choose between his voice and the safety of the people he loved. This kind of repression leaves no visible trace and requires no court order, but a journalist who cannot write under his own name, cannot return to his own country, and cannot speak publicly about what was done to him without calculating the risk to a sick elderly woman living alone in southern Tunisia has been silenced just as effectively as one sitting in a cell. In Daoud's case, that lasted years.

"These measures are being used as tools of pressure and intimidation due to my journalistic activities and the digital expression of my opposing political views."

He eventually left Tunisia altogether, without ever having been formally charged with any crime, without ever having been shown a case file, and without any realistic prospect of going back. 

What the Timeline Reveals

Skyline International for Human Rights has been building a record of how Tunisian authorities have systematically used legal and extralegal tools to silence journalists, lawyers, and commentators who dare to criticise those in power. Khaoula Boukrim faced a coordinated smear campaign and criminal prosecution tied directly to her journalism. Zied El Hani was sentenced to a year in prison for a Facebook post criticising judges who had themselves jailed journalists. Mourad Zghidi and Borhane Bessis each received three and a half years. Lawyer and media commentator Sonia Dahmani was arrested by masked security agents at the Tunisian Bar Association headquarters, prosecuted repeatedly under Decree 54 for her televised commentary, and spent over a year and a half behind bars. 

What connects these cases to Daoud's is not just the pattern of repression but the timeline. Daoud was among the first. The warrantless home raid, the interrogation of a family member about his journalism, and the verbally communicated travel ban with nothing in writing—all of this happened in 2022 before Decree 54 had even been enacted. The legislation that has since been used to prosecute so many others formalised a practice that was already well underway. Repealing it, as urgent as that demand is, would not on its own undo the culture it gave a legal name to. 

The World Association of Bloggers in Geneva, where Daoud filed a formal complaint, called on the Tunisian president to restore the press freedom protections of Decree No. 115 of 2011 and recommended filing a complaint against Tunisia's Ministry of Interior before the UN Human Rights Council. 

Daoud is telling his story now, carefully and anonymously, because he decided the record mattered more than the silence. His case is a reminder that the most insidious forms of repression are often the ones that leave no paper trail, that never make it to a courtroom, and that are therefore the hardest to document and the easiest to deny. That is exactly why they need to be documented.
 

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If you are a journalist, blogger, or human rights defender in Tunisia or across the region who has faced similar pressure, harassment, or persecution, Skyline International for Human Rights wants to hear from you. Documenting these cases, even anonymously, is one of the ways we push back against a system that depends on silence to function. Reach out to us at media@skylineforhuman.org