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February 17, 2005

Tunisian Dissidents Dis Ben Ali

Zine
Who is this man? Why, it's a photo-shopped rendition of Tunisian dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali as one of the Taliban mujihadeen. Or, you might just call him Zine the Mujihadeen.

The photo comes from a post on the Tunisian dissident blog TUNeZINE and accompanies a hip-hop style poem posted on the site. While not the most melifiluous poetry ever committed to pixels, it's nonetheless a daring post by "l'exile" (the exile). Read it first, and then more on TUNeZINE:

Zine you are the thug
You and your cronies
You behave like a barging dog
And slowly you are eating
Our flesh like a starving bug
Tunisia is suffering and thirsty because of you
Every one of us would like to spit on you
Some day, I hope it is soon
We will imprison you
In a cage similar to a balloon
Inside it, you’ll suffocate like a Buffoon
In the arena of the International Court,
Sitting in the death row,
Your buddies Saddam and Milosevic...
Joining you
They will be camping next to you
And the public opinion closely
Is watching you
Waiting your trial and to judge you...

« The people’s will shall not be defeated »

So TUNeZINE was founded by brash young writer Zouhair Yahyaoui. In May of last year, Yahyaoui Yahystarted an online poll on TUNeZine asking if Tunisia was "a) a republic, b) a kingdom, c) a zoo, or d) a prison." Well, in Ben Ali's Tunisia that kind of joking around is a no-no. On June 4, Yahyaoui was dragged out of a Tunis internet cafe by security forces, tortured, and sentenced to two years in prison.

After an international protest campaign, Yahyaoui was released from prison in November. But TUNeZINE remains extremely difficult to access from within Tunisia. And any post that the regime deems too taboo could land Yahyaoui back in the slammer.

In honor of Yahyaoui's daring to mock the dictator who has ruled his country since 1987 - the year Michael Jackson released Bad - we offer the following photos of Ben Ali (which, unlike the Taliban Ben Ali above, have not been photoshopped).

The first photo draws its title from another poem, Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." This photo, however, is called "Stamp of Myself" and can be used to mail letters in Tunisia:
Stampofmyself

And then there's "Photo of Myself", visible in the background of Ben Ali's palace as the great dictator greets Kofi Annan:
Photoofmyself

"L'etat c'est moi!"

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