Belgian TV crew 'harassed'

2005-11-15 14:51

Tunis - Tunisian authorities denied on Tuesday that a Belgian television crew reporting on freedom of expression in the country had been harassed and threatened in the capital Tunis.

Belgian television station RTBF said on Monday that one of its crews had been harassed, with the cameraman forced out of his car and his camera and video cassette confiscated.

Reporter Marianne Klaric was "threatened" and had "left the area for fear of being physical attacked", the station said, adding that the camera had been returned to the crew but not the tape.

It was the second reported attack on the foreign media in the run-up to a United Nations information technology summit being held in the Tunisian capital.

However, authorities in Tunis denied that the Belgian crew had been attacked.

"Contrary to the claims of the RTBF journalist, at no time was there any aggression or violence used against the journalist or her team," an official said, calling the claim "defamatory".

"It is a far cry, one could argue, from the duty of impartial and objective information you would expect from public service television," the official added.

On Friday, a journalist for France's Liberation newspaper, who was investigating human rights abuses in Tunisia, was gassed, beaten and stabbed near his hotel, his editors said.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is aimed at boosting access to modern telecommunications and the internet in the developing world.

- AFP