Prime minister Hichem Mechichi took part on Friday, May 14, 2021, in the Christchurch Call to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.
”The Christchurch Call” was launched on May 15, 2019, by French President Emmanuel Macron and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern after a massacre that left 51 people dead at two mosques.
The meeting was attended by French President Emmanuel Macron, King Abdullah of Jordan, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in addition to the participation of some number of heads of state and government and officials of several giant technology companies to launch a new initiative to combat terrorism and extremism on the Internet.
At the opening of his speech, Mr Mechichi welcomed this joint initiative and communicated his serious will to strengthen, through this participation, the mobilization in favour of this call.
Mechichi emphasised Tunisia’s determination to ensure citizens’ freedoms in all their kinds. “Freedom of worship is an essential heritage of our nation and we consider our inter-community as a wealth that we must preserve,” he said.
He emphasised that Tunisia is an emerging democracy in the age of digitization, where social networks have performed a pivotal role in democratic construction.
On the other hand, he called for vigilance and caution against terrorist groups that utilise the Internet to disseminate their extremist rhetoric and recruit terrorists.
Mr Mechichi accentuated that this joint initiative will ensure victory over these terrorist networks because recent history has revealed that “we are all victims of such barbaric practices and that terrorism and extremism are deemed a global threat that traverses geographical and cultural boundaries and that it cannot be assigned to a specific party, nationality or ethnic group ”.
He added that Tunisia has been the victim of many cowardly terrorist attacks conducted by terrorist groups in an try to destabilize the state, including targeting the national army and regime forces or destroying the model of openness by targeting the Bardo museum.
Hicham Mechichi indicated that Tunisia is determined to battle this phenomenon by the force of law, in complete harmony with international practices in this regard, indicating that the overall and multidomain national strategy of fight against terrorism and extremism in Tunisia is based on prevention, protection, monitoring and rapid response, adding that the fight against cybercrime is considered one of the most significant challenges facing our country.
The Prime Minister ended his speech by affirming that Tunisia will support any effort to strengthen and support the “Christchurch call”.
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