Abdelssalem Zbidi, the prime ministry’s communications officer dismissed the censorship concerns, arguing that the new regulations only conform to the stipulations of Decree 115 of 2011 on freedom of press, printing and publishing.
However, under decree 115, the legal deposit is only limited to non-periodical publications, while the new decree also targets periodicals.
“This decree diverts a law which exists elsewhere (the deposit of copies of all publications in a country to the national library), to an instrument of political and ideological censorship”, Karim Ben Smail, an editor at Ceres Bookshop, argued