[WSIS CS-Plenary] CS speakers from ITU for opening, roundtable and high level panel

[Vittorio Bertola]

Ralf Bendrath ha scritto:
> on behalf of the WSIS CS Privacy and Security Working Group, I strongly 
> object to the nomination of a parlamentarian as one of the civil
> society speakers. Robert Guerra has raised the issue earlier, but 
> unfortunately without any reaction by the nomination committee. We can't 
> seriously accept the inclusion of
> 
> Mohanmed Elyes Ben Marzouk
> 
> in this list.
> 
> He is listed here as "President, Organisation tunisienne des jeunes 
> médecins sans frontières", but has been appointed to the Tunisian 
> parliament by the Tunisian President Ben Ali some months ago.
> 
> We can't really consider this civil society, can we? And I thought we 
> had learned from the debate we had over nominating Adama Sammassekou...

In any case - even if it is always unpleasant to talk about individual 
cases - objections to Mr Samassekou were mostly on a matter of 
principle, rather than on whether his ideas and values were compatible 
with ours. But if, as it appears in this case, we are going to have as 
speaker for civil society a person that has been personally appointed 
(not elected?) to the Parliament by the President and ruler of a country 
known for constant breeches of human rights, then I have objections on 
matters of substance.

Personally, I would appreciate further clarifications on Mr Ben 
Marzouk's relationships with the current Tunisian regime and on the 
considerations that were made to include him in our list, so to make up 
my final opinion.

I have to add that at least in my country (but I imagine it's the same 
in most democratic countries) articles are already appearing here and 
there to call for a boycott of this Summit due to the Tunisian 
situation. It is increasingly hard for all of us to justify to other 
civil society groups and activists and to their conscience why they 
continue to support this process. I think it would be much better, for 
the success of the Summit itself, if controversial choices (especially 
on the HR plan) could be avoided, not to push things towards the 
breaking point.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...