Tunisia has softened a cybercrime law that has landed journalists and activists in prison, letting first-time offenders pay fines instead of serving time.

The amendment to Decree 54, which went into effect on Wednesday, sets fines of 10,000 to 20,000 Tunisian dinars ($3,370 to $6,740) for a first offence of spreading “false news” and related violations. The fines replace a five-year prison sentence. However, repeat offenders may still face jail.

Rights and media freedom advocates in Tunisia and abroad have long opposed the decree as repressive, saying it has been wielded against President Kais Saied’s opposition, activists and reporters.

The government, meanwhile, says the decree protects people and public order from attack, and is needed to tackle online crime and disinformation.

So what has changed, how has the decree been used, and why has Tunisia softened it now? What does the amended law say? Decree 54, issued by President Kais Saied in September 2022, made it an offence to spread falsehoods by electronic means.

Until this week, anyone convicted of circulating untrue information deemed threatening to public security, or to infringe on other people’s rights, risked up to five years in prison. The penalties also applied when allegedly doctored content, personal data or untrue allegations were spread to stir up hatred, incite attacks, defame someone, damage their reputation or cause them material or moral harm.

Targeting a public official or a person of equivalent status raised the ceiling to a decade behind bars and a fine of 100,000 dinars (more than $32,000). Anyone who reoffended faced six months behind bars on top of a 50,000-dinar fine (more than $16,000). The penalties doubled when the offence was aimed at a public official or someone of equivalent status. How has Decree 54 been used? The decree has garnered widespread criticism from Tunisian and international organisations concerned with press freedom.

The law was “one of the potent tools of oppression used by the government to crush dissent, crack down on civic space and arbitrarily restrict the freedom of expression in the country,” Said Benarbia, Middle East and North Africa director of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), told Al Jazeera.

Rafik Abdessalem, Tunisia’s foreign minister from 2011 to 2013 and a senior figure in the Islamist Ennahdha party, said the decree had been used “to silence every voice critical of the regime”. Ennahdha was a leading opposition party under Saied until he initiated a severe crackdown against it, sentencing its leadership including Abdessalem, to long prison sentences, some in absentia.

The National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists (SNJT) documented that hundreds of journalists, bloggers, opposition politicians, lawyers and activists had been tried under the decree since it came into force in 2022, and declared the situation an “emergency”.

In its latest annual report, the SNJT recorded 14 prosecutions of journalists between April 2025 and April 2026 – six of them under the decree.

In one example, prominent Tunisian lawyer and columnist Sonia Dahmani was sentenced to two years for criticising conditions in Tunisian prisons in a radio interview this May. She has been charged under the decree in five cases, each relating to remarks she made in media appearances, and had already been sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment after criticising Saied’s policies in 2024.

Lawyers carry banners during a protest against the arrest of Sonia Dahmani outside the Palace of Justice building in Tunis, Tunisia on May 13, 2024 [Jihed Abidellaoui/Reuters] Another citizen, Saber Ben Chouchane, was sentenced to death after being charged under a number of censorship laws, including Decree 54, for Facebook posts. He was later granted a presidential pardon.

Among international critics of the decree are Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the European Parliament, which has described it as “a tool to interfere with fundamental freedoms” and called for its repeal.

Critics connect it to a larger trend of democratic backsliding in the country since Saied took office, undoing progress the country has made after its 2011 revolution.

In 2021, during his third year in office, Saied suspended parliament, dismissed the government and began ruling by presidential decree – steps his critics have denounced as an autocratic subversion of Tunisia’s democratising political system.

A new constitution, put to a referendum in 2022 that many Tunisians boycotted, later locked in those powers.

In 2024, amid political repression, Saied won a second five-year term with more than 90 percent of the vote. It was the lowest turnout of any election since 2011 at 28.8 percent.

Saied rejects accusations of autocratic rule, saying his actions are legal and are needed to end years of disorder and alleged corruption. Why now?

Hours before Wednesday’s amendment came into effect, civil society groups spearheaded by Tunisia’s largest labour union unveiled plans for a nationwide march over what they regarded as restrictions on civil liberties.

Seven years after Tunisians elected Saied on promises he would address the country’s poor economic situation and tackle corruption, Tunisians have found themselves facing a cost-of-living crisis and restrictions to their political freedoms.

In the past year, the country has seen a rise in demonstrations by civil society against abuses of power, democratic backsliding and deteriorating living standards. In June, hundreds of protesters in Tunis called for press freedom and for detained critics to be freed. In July, thousands gathered on the fifth anniversary of Saied’s suspension of parliament, urging him to “leave”.

Abdessalem, the former foreign minister, credited popular mobilisation – in the form of marches and gatherings – for forcing the government to back down.

Saied also faced mounting pressure from abroad. In July, a member of the US House of Representatives, Joe Wilson, said he would keep pushing a bill that would impose sanctions on Saied and those closest to him for anti-democratic policies. Is the amendment enough?

Critics say the amendment does little to address freedom of speech concerns under Saied’s government.

The reduction in penalties was a “positive development”, Benarbia of the International Commission of Jurists said, but what was required was an end to all abusive prosecutions and the release of those arbitrarily detained under the decree.

Even if repealed, a host of other legal measures have been used to harass, imprison and exile Saied’s opponents.

“In short, the punishment has been reduced, but its repressive and punitive character remains unchanged,” Abdessalem told Al Jazeera. The amendment aimed to make the image of Saied’s Tunisia “less bleak” after it has become associated with “trials, arrests and the use of arbitrary decrees,” he said.

Lotfi Hajji, head of Al Jazeera’s bureau in Tunisia, said civil society groups and the journalists’ union were demanding Decree 54 be scrapped altogether, so that journalists could be judged under the 2011 press freedom law instead.

That law was one of the main gains of the revolution, Hajji said, balancing freedom with responsibility. Proposals in parliament since 2024 for a wider overhaul have been ignored.