Tunisia: From online smear campaigns to prison sentences, the crackdown on journalists must end

Read in Arabic / للقراءة بالعربية

Skyline International for Human Rights condemns the escalating campaign of harassment, online gender-based violence, and judicial intimidation targeting Tunisian journalist and podcast host Khaoula Boukrim. The campaign has intensified sharply since May 2026 and is directly tied to her journalism and to the platform she has built for exiled opposition voices through her podcast B3 on the independent news site Tumedia.

Khaoula Boukrim and the retaliation she is facing

Boukrim, who founded and edits Tumedia, has been subjected to a sustained and coordinated defamation campaign across social media, primarily on Facebook, following her critical coverage of President Kais Saied's government. The attacks escalated after she provided live coverage of a protest in Paris organized by the Tunisian Committee for Rights and Freedoms, during which participants displayed photographs of political detainees. Through her podcast B3, she has consistently offered a space for exiled dissidents, opposition figures, and human rights defenders to speak about conditions inside Tunisia, a space that has effectively vanished from the country's domestic media.

In a series of Facebook posts, Boukrim criticized Saied directly, describing him as living in a "state of permanent anxiety about every free voice" and arguing that even podcasts and voices from exile have become a source of discomfort for an authority that refuses to accept any independent media space outside its control. She challenged a presidential communiqué issued in response to Italian journalist Luca Gambardella's reporting, describing the response as evidence of the "fragility of the system" and suggesting that the regime "would not survive the hour in which Facebook went down in Tunisia." She characterized the current political order as a "government of the admin" and a "Facebook state."

The response was telling. Boukrim found herself at the center of a coordinated defamation campaign run through pro-government Facebook pages. Images of her were fabricated and circulated. Statements she never made were attributed to her. False claims about her private life spread across the platform. Even her late father, who died more than 25 years ago, was not spared. This is a tactic the National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) has repeatedly warned is an escalating threat to critical journalists in Tunisia. But what makes the campaign against Boukrim stand out is its gendered nature. The doctored images, the sexualized defamation, and the attacks on her family are not random online abuse. They are deliberate, targeting her specifically as a woman in public life, and they follow a pattern that women journalists across the MENA region know all too well.

Facebook remains the dominant social media platform in Tunisia and the primary space where both independent journalism and government-aligned defamation campaigns play out. Meta's own Corporate Human Rights Policy commits the company to "champion respect for human rights in every action we take and every product we build." Its policy on human rights defenders states that Meta "condemns all threats, acts of intimidation and retaliation, persecution, and physical and legal attacks against human rights defenders." Allowing organized defamation campaigns against journalists to run unchecked on Facebook, when those campaigns serve the interests of a government that is actively imprisoning journalists, is difficult to reconcile with any of those commitments.

This is not new for Boukrim. In August 2024, Tunisia's Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) revoked her press accreditation, accusing her of failing to maintain "objective, balanced, and neutral coverage" of the electoral process. The SNJT condemned the decision and appealed it in court. In November 2024, she was summoned for interrogation by the anti-crime brigade in Ben Arous as a "suspect," responding publicly that "journalism is not a crime." She has also faced legal proceedings connected to her coverage of a 2022 protest against the constitutional referendum outside the Ministry of Interior in Tunis. In her own words, she has described herself as a "prisoner in waiting," expecting arrest as a matter of time.

The political podcast has become the last refuge for Tunisian journalists who have been pushed out of broadcast and print. Boukrim runs B3 from exile, with no institutional backing, using a mobile phone. That this is enough to provoke a coordinated smear campaign, the revocation of press credentials, and a criminal summons tells us everything about where press freedom in Tunisia stands today.

A country where journalism has become a criminal act

Boukrim is far from alone. The Tunisian authorities have been dismantling independent media and criminalizing critical journalism at an accelerating pace since Saied's seizure of power in July 2021, and the last few months have been among the worst.

The most recent case is that of journalist Zied El Hani, one of Tunisia's most prominent journalists, who was sentenced on 7 May 2026 to one year in prison for "insulting others via public communications networks" under Article 86 of Tunisia's Telecommunications Code. The prosecution stemmed from a Facebook post in which Elhani criticized judges who had sentenced fellow journalists. The SNJT condemned the verdict as an assault on press freedom, and Amnesty International called for his immediate release, describing the sentence as a "dangerous escalation in the targeting of journalists and freedom of expression." Writing from Mornaguia Prison, Elhani refused to appeal, stating that he does not recognize the legitimacy of a trial conducted outside the framework of Decree 115 of 2011, the press freedom law he helped draft on behalf of the SNJT. This is the tenth time in his career that he has been prosecuted for his journalism.

Elhani's case sits alongside a growing list. Journalists Mourad Zghidi and Borhane Bessis were sentenced in January 2026 to three and a half years in prison under charges that Reporters Without Borders has described as "legal persecution" for critical commentary. Journalist Chadha Haj Mbarek was sentenced to five years in February 2025 under Decree-Law No. 54 of 2022, the cybercrime law that has become the primary weapon against press freedom in Tunisia. She was released in January 2026 after nearly two and a half years in detention, during which she suffered serious medical neglect. Former judge and human rights lawyer Ahmed Souab was sentenced to five years in October 2025. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Decree 54 has turned "every journalist into a suspect." RSF's 2026 World Press Freedom Index places Tunisia at 137th out of 180 countries, a drop of eight places from the previous year.

Beyond individual prosecutions, press accreditations have been revoked; professional press cards have been withheld since September 2025 without justification; the state of emergency has been extended continuously since 2015, and since July 2025 the authorities have suspended between 20 and 25 civil society organizations, including the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH), one of Africa's oldest human rights organizations, and the local branch of Avocats Sans Frontières. The SNJT's annual report on press freedom for 2024-2025 describes a landscape that is closing fast.

• Cease all judicial harassment and intimidation against Boukrim and all journalists facing prosecution for their work.
• Repeal Decree-Law No. 54 of 2022 and cease using Article 86 of the Telecommunications Code to criminalize journalism and peaceful expression.
• Release all journalists currently detained in connection with their professional activities, including Zied El Hani, Mourad Zghidi, and Borhane Bessis.
• Restore all arbitrarily revoked press accreditations and resume the issuance of professional press cards and work permits withheld since September 2025.
• Investigate smear campaigns targeting journalists, with particular attention to the gendered nature of attacks against women journalists and the role of organized networks of pro-government accounts on Facebook.

We also call on Meta to act on the organized defamation campaigns being run on Facebook against journalists like Boukrim. A company that has committed publicly to protecting freedom of expression and supporting human rights defenders cannot look away when its platform is being used to destroy them.