To be honest, the world of prisons has
always fascinated me. I have always wanted to know more about jails and wanted
to help people that are held behind bars. This strange relationship I have with
prisons started in my childhood.
When I was a child I used to enjoy
spending hours and hours in front of our home’s bookcase reading titles,
discovering authors’ names, and leafing through the different books before
choosing the one that would be my companion for some days and nights.
The hours I spent there were some of the
best of my life. During those journeys into the world of books, I made
discoveries. Indeed, when leafing through the books I noticed the presence of
my father and some of his friends/ comrades’ names on the first page of some of
them. I also came across some letters or papers with prison stamps. I
understood that those books were my father’s’ books in jail. I already knew
that he had spent some years of his life behind bars as a political prisoner. I
have always been eager to know more about that experience and to understand it.
I also had the opportunity to see some of his photos taken in prison. Moreover,
I discovered the majority of the Tunisian prisons (from outside of course) as
my father has always had the habit to take us on long journeys across the
country to discover its nature, archeological sites and guess what; the prisons
where he had spent some months and years. He also used to tell me some
anecdotes about things he had experienced in jail.
Some years later, some of my friends had
been arrested and jailed for political reasons or for cannabis consumption and
upon their release I always had questions about the prison and its conditions.
As a blogger dealing with human rights issues, I have always worked on cases of
violence and torture against prisoners. I even wanted to visit some of the
Tunisian prisons but this seemed to be a hard endeavor, something impossible.
This is why I did not hesitate at all and
actually became excited when I had the opportunity to do so. Last
November, I visited some prisons within the framework of the prison-screening
series organized by the World Organization against Torture and the Carthage
Film Festival. I visited la Morneguia and Manuba’s prisons.
On our way to the screening room in La
Morneguia’s Prison, I noticed the presence of a library. Curiosity drove me
inside the room where I had a long discussion with the librarian. The latter
showed me the different books on the shelves and told me about their sources
and the mechanisms of their distribution to the prisoners. I also asked him
about the possibility of offering books to prisons. He explained that this was
possible after the submission of a request to the General Directorate of
Prisons and rehabilitation centers. The same night, I had a discussion with my
father who is more experienced than I am when it comes to jails, their
conditions, and their internal laws. I asked him about his personal experience
and I learned that with his comrades they had had recourse to hunger strikes to
claim their right to read behind the bars. He also gave me some numbers and
realities about the incarceration world. Then, I expressed my worries as to the
subjects of some of the books I saw on the shelves of the prison library.
Indeed, they were Islamic fundamentalist in nature. I immediately recalled some
of the studies and articles presenting jails as one of the most fertile grounds
for the indoctrination and recruitment of Tunisians by extremist groups.
Film screening in Morneguia
Prisoners Reading ( late 1970s)
In la Manuba’s prison, however, I did not
have the opportunity to see the library. Later on a friend that had been
arrested there told me that only two bookshelves were available for prisoners.
Manuba's prison
With my father we first decided to follow
the procedure indicated by the librarian we met in la Morneguia’s prison and
send some of our personal books to one or two prisons. But a thorough
examination of the situation and a look at the statistics related to Tunisian
prisons and rehabilitation centers as well as to the: Standard Minimum Rules
for the Treatment of Prisoners Adopted by the First United Nations Congress
on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, held at Geneva in
1955, and approved by the Economic and Social Council and a thorough study of
the report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights Tunisia Office entitled: Prisons in Tunisia International
Standards versus Reality was sufficient to convince us of the necessity of
acting on a larger scale and try to help in changing this situation.
To
be sure one of the main missions of the prison is: the rehabilitation,
re-education and reintegration of the prisoner in his/her community after
having served his/her prison sentence. A large number of male and female
prisoners who are in their early twenties and engaged in university education
were in the process of serving a prison sentence as a result of their
committing a drug-consumption crime -. In this context more than 53 percent of
the total number of prisoners is accused of holding, consuming or dealing.
Moreover the article 40 of the Standard Minimum Rules
for the Treatment of prisoners states that:
Every institution shall have a library for
the use of all categories of prisoners, adequately stocked with both
recreational and instructional books, and prisoners shall be encouraged to make
full use of it.
The article 19 of the Tunisian Law on the
organization of prisons states that:
The
prisoner is entitled to continue being informed of what is happening in the
outside world, through access to writing instruments, reading books, magazines
and daily newspapers through the prison administration under the regulations of
the institution. Every prison should have a library with books and magazines
for reading. A prisoner is also allowed to obtain other written documents
enabling him to pursue his educational programs in educational institutions
from inside the prison. Musicals and theatrical performances are organized in
spaces inside the prison and are produced by detainees or made in cooperation
with the cultural and youth structures in the region. Exhibitions are also
organized inside the prison facilities or the products of cultural clubs, such
as paintings and creations, are exposed in regional and local exhibitions.
But,
the programs implemented in the Tunisian prisons according to this rule, could
be considered as “poor” for several reasons including lack of possibilities and
budgets. The use of books available in some prison libraries is almost non
existent, which is therefore reflected in the administration’s lack of interest
in feeding it with new books, magazines and other cultural materials. In terms
of the prisons’ budgets as revealed by the directors, there are no financial
allocations earmarked for the purpose.
We
thus decided to launch a larger initiative relying on social media and the
generosity of Tunisians as well as the collaboration with the World
Organization Against Torture that has already a cooperation agreement with the
General Directorate of prisons and rehabilitation.
On
February 11th, 2016 I announced the beginning of the initiative on
my personal Facebook Profile. I included the address of the Tunisian office of
the World Organization Against Torture as our main drop off point and two phone
numbers. People started to share it immediately. It went viral. Few minutes
later, I received the first call from someone who wanted to give me some books.
The day after, with my father we were on our way to Sfax when a woman called me
to inform me that she wanted to give us some books but that she was far away
from the capital. She was in El Jem, 30 minutes later I collected the books she
had prepared for the collection. Many local and foreign journalists contacted
me and wrote articles and did reports about the collect. I was really happy to
see the enthusiasm of all those generous persons who believed in the importance
of such an action. I decided to launch a special page for the initiative and
two months later more than 2500 person are following it and interacting with us
as to the initiative. We had already collected more than 10000 books in
different languages. We also received books from Tunisians living abroad and
even from foreigners.
We
started with one drop off point and now we have more than 10 collection points:
-3
points in La Marsa.
-1
point in Le Kram.
-1
point in Sfax.
1-
point in Sousse.
1-point
in kasserine.
1-point
in Jendouba.
-2
points in Jerba.
On
April 5th, 2016, we delivered a first set of books
to the General Directorate of Prisons and Rehabilitation Centers. Now, we are
still collecting books.
To
sum up:
The
initiative is open. It is not limited in time. As a first step we are targeting
the collection of 15000 books in different languages to be delivered to the 27
prison and rehabilitation center across the country. Now, we are studying the
possibility of enrichment of the initiative through the organization of reading
and writing workshops and other cultural activities. The initiative is our
small contribution in the dissemination of the culture of human rights among
Tunisian citizens and in the national effort in the fight against extremism and
terrorism, as we believe that books can change many lives and minds.
