[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: update on CS emergency plenary

[Ralf Bendrath]

Hi all,

and thanks a lot, Andy, for updating everybody out there on this.

> In the end, it appeared to be decided that there would be one speaker, a
> woman from Africa,  who would leave out the language singling out Tunisia.
There was no consensus on it. I got no answer to my question why Tunisia
is not considered an African country, and the Human Rights Caucus
definitely did not agree on censoring the language on Tunisia.

> But the question still remains open; when civil society representatives
> spoke during the late morning plenary, just before lunch, the human rights
> caucus did not present their remarks, because it was clear that no
> democratic consensus had been reached on the issue. 

> They will continue the
> debate later today, and hopefully strike some kind of agreement so they may
> present first thing tomorrow morning during the plenary session.
We have to seriously think about how to deal with these agents
provocateurs. Everything was done according to procedures we had during
WSIS phase one, and the statement was actually not bashing Tunisia, but
encouraging the true implementation of human rights in all countries
including Tunisia. (We hope to be able to send out the statement later
today and also get an English translation.)
The Tunisians messed up the whole thing, and the chair was obviously not
capable of moderating in a sufficient manner.

This is really serious. 
If you look at the outcome, the Tunisian close-to-government "NGOs" got
what they wanted: There was no public civil society statement on human
rights, and the woman from the Tunisian Human Rights League could not
speak. 
Keeping in mind that the PrepCom venue looks more like a Las Vegas
spaceship that landed here in the middle of nowhere than it looks like
Tunisia, it seems that Tunisia just does not exist in this summit
process. 
A number of like minded civil society groups are currently discussing to
form their own structures to make sure that they can speak about all
issues that are important to them. If we (or rather the Tunisian NGOs
close to the government) go on like this, we will have a de facto
censorship. Many of us are not sure anymore if it makes sense to deal
with everybody, even if it is clear that there are fundamental
differences on important issues. 

Ralf