Graffiti in memory of cyber-dissident Zouhair Yahyaoui, who was jailed and tortured for running a satirical blog critical of the Ben Ali dictatorship. Photo by Yamen via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0) Tunisian blogger Zouhair Yahyaoui, who founded the satirical TUNeZINE online forum, was jailed and tortured for publishing “false news”. His story, and those of many others, are now being brought to the fore as part of a series of public hearings on human rights violations that took place during the rule of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, who governed Tunisia with an iron fist for 23 years before his ousting in January 2011. Bloggers, activists and relatives of those who were subjected to abuses by the Ben Ali regime for expressing themselves online or accessing banned content, testified about the dictatorship’s violations against freedom of expression and the right to privacy on the internet before Tunisia's Truth and Dignity Commission. As part of Tunisia's democratic reforms and transitional justice processes, the Truth and Dignity Commission (IVD) was established in December 2013, with the purpose of investigating crimes and abuses dating back to July 1955—just after the country gained autonomy from France—to help build democracy, dismantle the authoritarian system, and end impunity for past crimes and violations. The authority, which is investigating more than 50,000 complaints, decided to hold public hearings for a number of cases that are of public interest, such as testimonies by women and women’s rights activists, families of protesters killed during the 2010-2011 uprising, those injured during the same uprising, and victims of forced military recruitment. More than 11,000 of the complaints received by the commission relate to violations of freedom of speech, both on and offline. The commission dedicated one public session solely to internet freedom violations. Broadcast live on national television and streamed online, the session took place two days before the country’s national internet freedom day, which honors the memory of blogger Zouhair Yahyaoui. The president of the Truth and Dignity Commission, Sihem Ben Sedrine, herself a victim of Ben Ali’s cyber-police, began the session by describing Ben Ali’s information control system which earned Tunisia the title of an “enemy of the internet”: The repressive system had enormous technical, financial and human means, but also an important network that included the presidency, the ministry of interior, the external communication agency [the Ben Ali regime’s main propaganda agency, now dissolved], the former ruling party with all its branches specialized in monitoring activists’ online content… In the early 2000s, Ben Ali's repressive system went after Zouhair Yahyaoui, who blogged behind the pen name Ettounsi (The Tunisian), before Tunisian authorities arrested and jailed him. Yahyaoui, a pioneer of cyber-dissidence, founded the TUNeZINE satirical forum in 2001, where he asked his readers to vote on whether Tunisia was a “republic, a kingdom, a zoo or a prison.” On 4 June 2002, police officers in plainclothes arrested him in a cybercafe, and for four days after his arrest his whereabouts remained unknown. He was later tried and sentenced to two years and four months for “publishing false news.” His sentence was reduced to two years on appeal. In celebration of the National Internet Freedom Day on 13 March, the Tunisian Post issued two stamps: the first commemorating Zouhair Yahyaoui, while the second is in recognition of the efforts towards a free and open internet in Tunisia. In a video testimony, journalist Taïeb Moalla told listeners: “I can tell you about Zouhair the victim, but as I knew him he would like to be remembered as a courageous dissident, [for] his satirical writings that weakened the image of Ben Ali.” For Moalla, who was a friend of Yahyaoui's, the blogger “played a very important role in the Tunisian revolution even though it took place 5 years after his tragic death.” “To those who tortured him, we say that we will not forgive,” he said. Zouhair’s mother Khadija Yahyaoui also testified about the life of her activist son, and about what he and her entire family were subjected to in government retaliation for her son's activism. “My son was writing only about the truth of what Tunisians were facing, the day he decided to go public and started his blog, he got arrested,” she said. “For a long period, the authorities declined to give us any information about my son….we thought he died in jail! ….all of us were under surveillance.” Zouhair was released on parole in November 2003. His health was weakened by torture, poor prison conditions, and the several hunger strikes he went on to protest his imprisonment.