TUNISIA: Protests from Le Monde and Libération newspapers and Reporters Without Borders have fallen on deaf ears in the French government. The foreign ministry waited 40 hours after the French journalist Christophe Boltanski was stabbed and beaten in Tunis on Friday night before politely asking president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's regime "to shed light" on the incident.
The attack by four athletic young men took place between a police checkpoint and Boltanski's hotel, in a country where all foreign journalists are followed by plainclothes police.
At least a half-dozen opposition figures in Tunisia have been beaten in similar circumstances, but this is the first time a foreign journalist has been subjected to violence.
Despite the attack, the month-long hunger strike by seven leading members of the Tunisian opposition and the detention of more than 400 political prisoners, the French ministers of finance and industry arrive in Tunis tomorrow for the three-day UN World Summit on the Information Society.
Holding such a summit in Tunisia, where the internet is censored, is "like organising a summit on sexuality in the Vatican, or on human rights in North Korea", Robert Ménard of Reporters Without Borders told Libération.
Since he seized power 18 years ago, President Ben Ali has been "re-elected" four times with scores in the 99 per cent range. The French government argues that "discreet messages" are a "more efficient" way of putting pressure on the regime than outright criticism. Paris is Tunis's leading trade partner, investor and creditor.
When President Chirac last visited Tunis in December 2003, he praised the Tunisian "economic miracle", saying: "The most important human rights are to eat, receive medical care and education and have a place to live."
Diplomatic staff from the US, Britain, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and Sweden - but not from France - have visited the seven hunger strikers, who have camped in the office of the secretary general of the Tunisian Human Rights League since October 18th.
They are demanding freedom of association, freedom of press and internet sites and the liberation of political prisoners. Their telephones, internet connections and e-mail addresses have been shut down by the regime.
On November 11th, the day he was stabbed and beaten, Boltanski published an article in Libération about attacks last week on Mokhtar Trifi, the president of the Tunisian Human Rights League, and Sana Benhachour, president of the hunger strikers' support committee.