Thousands of centre-left demonstrators violently clashed with police in street battles that completely shut down central Tunis last week, left scores seriously injured and underlined the persistent divisions in Tunisian society.

Thousands of Tunisians have protested against a government ban on street demonstrations. Credit: Jake Lippincott/IPS.

The demonstrations were organised by several political parties, unions and human rights groups. Ostensibly meant to mark the national Martyrs Day celebration, their more immediate aim was to challenge the recent government ban on protests in central Tunis.

The police response was violent and seemingly disorganised, and called into question both the government’s democratic credentials and its ability to maintain order even in the heart of Tunis.

The trouble started when the Tunisian government, which is dominated by the moderate Islamist party Ennahda, justified its ban on all demonstrations late last month, by painting it as an effort to ‘maintain order’ on the eve of the economically vital summer tourist season here.

However, the centre-left opposition saw this ban as a blatant attack on political freedom. After a small protest against unemployment was violently crushed by police on Apr. 7, the opposition began organising a massive protest to challenge the ban and the government.

The demonstration began on the morning of Apr. 9 and was attacked almost immediately by police wielding truncheons and tear gas guns. The uniformed police were supported by masked young men in plain clothes (generally known in Tunisia as “militia”) who also enthusiastically attacked protesters and journalists with sticks and stones.

Several hundred protesters built barricades and threw stones at security forces. By the end of the day scores of people, including French journalist Julie Schneider, had been hospitalised.

The excessive use of tear gas, involvement of militia and intentional attacks on journalists and bystanders with cameras brought to mind the worst excesses of the former dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali and has proved to be a public relations disaster for the governing coalition here.

Due to extensive public backlash, the government rescinded the protest ban. Recent polls have indicated that the Tunisian government is still popular, but facing increasing challenges.

According to the Tunisian National Association of Statistics, total unemployment here has risen 0.6 percent, going from 18.3 percent in the second quarter of 2011 to 18.9 this February. The unemployment rate for college graduates is even worse, rising from 29.2 to 30.5 in the same period.

While continued economic problems could be eroding Ennahda’s support, they have also been caught in the middle of an increasingly vicious cultural conflict between hard-line Salafis on the one hand, who want to scrap the Tunisian constitution and replace it with sharia law, and leftists who want to preserve Tunisia’s socially liberal traditions and increase protections for women and minorities.

Ennahda’s official ideology calls for inclusive parliamentary democracy loosely guided by moderate Islamic principles. During the election this mix allowed Ennahda to gain the support of a broad swathe of Tunisian society, from hard-line Salafis to non-practising Muslims.

However, now that it has to govern this sprawling voter base, Ennahda and its coalition allies are struggling to keep disparate constituents happy.

Earlier this month, in what was seen as a nod to the party’s more conservative supporters, the government spoke approvingly of a decision by a provincial judge to sentence two young men to over seven years each in prison for insulting the Prophet Muhammad on their facebook pages.

This decision to punish the two men was supported by many mainstream Tunisians but outraged intellectuals and many sexual and religious minorities who fear that this is the first step in a broader campaign of intolerance.

Furthermore, in recent months Salafi vigilante groups have been attacking people they see as ‘un-Islamic’. While the Salafis are not officially supported by the government, many leftist Tunisians accuse the authorities of turning a blind eye to their violence.

Saif Bjaoui is a young queer activist who participated in the Apr. 9 protest. When asked what motivated him to attend the demonstration, he told IPS more than anything else it was opposition to Ennahda and what he sees as their intolerant policies.

He mentioned the recent court case and added, “I’m afraid of Ennahda, because they are trying to take our rights, Samir Dilou (the current Tunisian minister for human rights, and an Ennahda party member) said last month that gays are ‘sick’,” he said.

Early last February, Dilou told a local talk show that gay people do not deserve freedom of expression because they are mentally ill.

As a result, Bjaoui is not very optimistic about minority rights in the new democratic believing that, “things will get worse before they get better.”

Two days after the protest, Rached Cherif, a member of the Tunisian League of Humanists, told IPS that the actions of the Ennahda government were putting certain segments of Tunisian society in danger.

“The government is tolerant of Salafi activism which is aimed directly at minorities like Christians, Jews and gays – this puts these minorities directly in danger,” he said.

“The government is friendly with the Salifists but they brutally suppressed the peaceful leftist protest (on Apr. 9),” he lamented.

Despite the significant number of Tunisians who support leftist parties and minority rights, it is clear that many people here also support Ennahda’s conservative policies and oppose increased rights for sexual and religious minorities.

Cherif believes that many Tunisians are frankly “intolerant” of social liberalism, which might hurt the new democracy’s chances at survival.

“Democracy without minority rights is not democracy,” Bjaoui added.

On Apr. 10, a day after the repression, demonstrators returned to the main drag in downtown Tunis accompanied by a group of opposition assembly members. Many of the rank and file protesters wore bandages from injuries sustained the day before. This time, however, both demonstrators and police showed restraint and the protest went on loudly but peacefully.

The next day, the government officially declared that protests were once again legal in central Tunis. The immediate crisis caused by the protest ban seems to have abated.

Still, Tunisian society remains starkly divided on social issues and plagued with economic problems. If the new democracy here is to survive, there must be some steps towards reconciliation.

By Jake Lippincott
TUNIS, Feb 29 2012 (IPS)

In the Friends of Syria meeting held in Tunis last week, Gulf Arab monarchies offered nearly unqualified support for the Syrian opposition, while the democratic states were more cautious.

Representatives of 60 nations and members of Syria’s largest opposition group, the Syrian National Congress (SNC), met here Friday to discuss a possible resolution to escalating conflict in Syria.

The nations present were all generally in support of Syria’s opposition and opposed to the authoritarian regime of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad. Iran, China and Russia, all high-profile international backers of the Assad regime, were notably absent.

The meeting in Tunis was designed to be a space in which the SNC and their international supporters could formulate a unified plan of action to stop the atrocities in Syria.

However, despite the absence of any Assad supporters, disagreements among the different parties present were more striking then any agreements reached.

While every participant offered rhetorical support to the Syrian rebels and universal condemnation of the Syrian regime, many important delegates were unwilling to back their expressed sympathies with concrete offers of military aid.

A serious rupture between Gulf Arab monarchies calling explicitly for regime change and immediate military support for the opposition, and democracies (including the United States and host nation Tunisia), who stressed caution and stopped short of demanding that Assad leave the country, proved to be a major obstacle to the conference.

The current Tunisian government came to power as the result of a revolution against a dictator similar to Assad, and most senior officials are former dissidents who spent decades imprisoned or in exile.

Thus it came as no surprise earlier this month when Tunisia expelled the Syrian ambassador in response to the violence in the country.

However, at this meeting the Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki said that Assad should receive immunity from prosecution and that international military intervention in Syria would be a “serious mistake.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton struck a similar tone, condemning the Assad regime and praising the opposition, but not offering any explicit military support.

The Syrian opposition came to this meeting hoping for tangible military promises in what is now an increasingly brutal and one-sided civil war; the measured language of Marzouki and Clinton was anathema to what the SNC and broader Syrian opposition wanted to hear.

Achraf al Moqdad, Syrian opposition activist and member of the Current for National Change, told IPS, “This isnt what the Syrian people want, they want a concrete resolution with the threat of military action, or (real) military action, to stop the crimes against humanity that are happening everyday, every night in Syria,” he said.

SNC’s press spokesman Mouayad AlKiblawi was even more direct. “(Marzouki and Clinton) never talked about self defense. We want to keep the peaceful image of our revolution but (the regime doesnt) allow us. What (does the international community) want us to do, do they want to exterminate the Syrian people, must there be 100,000 victims before the international community intervenes?” he asked IPS.

When asked what kind of international intervention the SNC wanted, AlKiblawi emphasised that the opposition wanted the international community to treat Syria like Libya, where air-strikes and direct military aid were instrumental in toppling the Qaddafi regime, and not like Yemen, where slow international pressure and promises of immunity finally caused the regime to relinquish power.

“The Syrian streets want any kind of intervention that (ends the) killing here, they don’t care about the method….We’re not Yemen, we have already gone (far) beyond that….it’s nonsense to apply the Yemeni solution in Syria, we don’t agree with that. We won’t live with killers (linked to the regime),” he said.

Clinton and Marzouki’s reluctance to offer military backing disappointed the opposition so much that at one point it looked like SNC representatives were going to walk out of the conference.

Meanwhile, the Gulf Arab dictatorships present at the meeting gave nearly unconditional backing to the democratic aspirations of the Syrian opposition.

Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia called for immediate shipments of arms to the Syrian opposition and explicitly advocated broader military support and the prosecution of Assad and his entourage.

Both these nations are absolute monarchies with few democratic freedoms. The fact that they are throwing their support behind the Syrian democracy movement may have more to do with their longstanding loathing of the Assad regime and his Iranian backers than to any principled commitment to democratisation.

The very fact that Qatar and Saudi Arab are dictatorships may allow them to support intervention in Syria, an idea that is extremely divisive in the Arab world and beyond, whereas Clinton and Marzouki have to be cognizant of the public opinion of their country’s citizens.

Most analysts in Washington believe that the U.S. public will not accept any more costly, uncertain military adventures in the Middle East and while many Tunisians support the Syrian revolution, there is a strong undercurrent of support for Assad because of his rhetorical stance against Israel and his vocal opposition to the United States.

The hard fact that foreign intervention in Syria is still extremely controversial in the international community was not lost on any of the conference’s attendees.

As the first delegates began filing into the hotel, a crowd of about two hundred pro-Assad protesters amassed in front of the conference waving Ba’athist and Palestinian flags and shouting slogans denouncing the U.S. and Gulf Arabs.

Minutes before Marzouki and Clinton arrived at the meeting, the protest turned violent, and demonstrators were beaten back by police.

While this meeting was supposed to present a unified front against Assad, it did anything but. For now, it seems that the bloodshed in Syria will continue.

Excerpt:

In the Friends of Syria meeting held in Tunis last week, Gulf Arab monarchies offered nearly unqualified support for the Syrian opposition, while the democratic states were more cautious.
Representatives of 60 nations and members of Syria’s largest opposition group, the Syrian National Congress (SNC), met here Friday to discuss a possible resolution to escalating conflict in Syria.

The nations present were all generally in support of Syria’s opposition and opposed to the authoritarian regime of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad. Iran, China and Russia, all high-profile international backers of the Assad regime, were notably absent.

The meeting in Tunis was designed to be a space in which the SNC and their international supporters could formulate a unified plan of action to stop the atrocities in Syria.

However, despite the absence of any Assad supporters, disagreements among the different parties present were more striking then any agreements reached.

While every participant offered rhetorical support to the Syrian rebels and universal condemnation of the Syrian regime, many important delegates were unwilling to back their expressed sympathies with concrete offers of military aid.

A serious rupture between Gulf Arab monarchies calling explicitly for regime change and immediate military support for the opposition, and democracies (including the United States and host nation Tunisia), who stressed caution and stopped short of demanding that Assad leave the country, proved to be a major obstacle to the conference.

The current Tunisian government came to power as the result of a revolution against a dictator similar to Assad, and most senior officials are former dissidents who spent decades imprisoned or in exile.

Thus it came as no surprise earlier this month when Tunisia expelled the Syrian ambassador in response to the violence in the country.

However, at this meeting the Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki said that Assad should receive immunity from prosecution and that international military intervention in Syria would be a “serious mistake.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton struck a similar tone, condemning the Assad regime and praising the opposition, but not offering any explicit military support.

The Syrian opposition came to this meeting hoping for tangible military promises in what is now an increasingly brutal and one-sided civil war; the measured language of Marzouki and Clinton was anathema to what the SNC and broader Syrian opposition wanted to hear.

Achraf al Moqdad, Syrian opposition activist and member of the Current for National Change, told IPS, “This isn’t what the Syrian people want, they want a concrete resolution with the threat of military action, or (real) military action, to stop the crimes against humanity that are happening everyday, every night in Syria,” he said.

SNC’s press spokesman Mouayad AlKiblawi was even more direct. “(Marzouki and Clinton) never talked about self defense. We want to keep the peaceful image of our revolution but (the regime doesnt) allow us. What (does the international community) want us to do, do they want to exterminate the Syrian people, must there be 100,000 victims before the international community intervenes?” he asked IPS.

When asked what kind of international intervention the SNC wanted, AlKiblawi emphasised that the opposition wanted the international community to treat Syria like Libya, where air-strikes and direct military aid were instrumental in toppling the Qaddafi regime, and not like Yemen, where slow international pressure and promises of immunity finally caused the regime to relinquish power.

“The Syrian streets want any kind of intervention that (ends the) killing here, they don’t care about the method….We’re not Yemen, we have already gone (far) beyond that….it’s nonsense to apply the Yemeni solution in Syria, we don’t agree with that. We won’t live with killers (linked to the regime),” he said.

Clinton and Marzouki’s reluctance to offer military backing disappointed the opposition so much that at one point it looked like SNC representatives were going to walk out of the conference.

Meanwhile, the Gulf Arab dictatorships present at the meeting gave nearly unconditional backing to the democratic aspirations of the Syrian opposition.

Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia called for immediate shipments of arms to the Syrian opposition and explicitly advocated broader military support and the prosecution of Assad and his entourage.

Both these nations are absolute monarchies with few democratic freedoms. The fact that they are throwing their support behind the Syrian democracy movement may have more to do with their longstanding loathing of the Assad regime and his Iranian backers than to any principled commitment to democratisation.

The very fact that Qatar and Saudi Arab are dictatorships may allow them to support intervention in Syria, an idea that is extremely divisive in the Arab world and beyond, whereas Clinton and Marzouki have to be cognizant of the public opinion of their country’s citizens.

Most analysts in Washington believe that the U.S. public will not accept any more costly, uncertain military adventures in the Middle East and while many Tunisians support the Syrian revolution, there is a strong undercurrent of support for Assad because of his rhetorical stance against Israel and his vocal opposition to the United States.

The hard fact that foreign intervention in Syria is still extremely controversial in the international community was not lost on any of the conference’s attendees.

As the first delegates began filing into the hotel, a crowd of about two hundred pro-Assad protesters amassed in front of the conference waving Ba’athist and Palestinian flags and shouting slogans denouncing the U.S. and Gulf Arabs.

Minutes before Marzouki and Clinton arrived at the meeting, the protest turned violent, and demonstrators were beaten back by police.

While this meeting was supposed to present a unified front against Assad, it did anything but. For now, it seems that the bloodshed in Syria will continue.

(END)

A month after the first anniversary of the Tunisian revolution, the North African country is being rocked by labour protests supported by the Union General Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT), the main labour union in the country. The protests are centered in the impoverished western regions.

Gafsa is a neglected town. Credit: Jake Lippincott/IPS.

The west of the country has been historically underdeveloped and ignored by the dominant coastal regions. This inequality has been a major cause of social unrest since at least Tunisian Independence in 1956.

Last year’s revolution began in the western city of Sidi Bouzid, and a strike organised by the militant wing of the UGTT in the neighbouring city Gafsa back in 2008 is seen by many here as a precursor to the more recent revolution.

Gafsa and the surrounding area are known for their rich phosphate mines. Mining is extremely profitable, but the workers in the mines and the residents of Gafsa see little of the profits, which have historically been reaped by coastal elites.

The 2008 strike enjoyed the support of the UGTT’s rank and file, but it was quickly met with harsh and fatal government repression.

The people of Gafsa hoped that the revolution of last year and the subsequent election would end decades of corruption and regional bias. But they have been disappointed.

Last week, two Gafsa sisters in their twenties, Sousou and Asma Didi, spoke to IPS in the cafe area of the palatial Jugorta Hotel on the outskirts of the city. Despite the lavish design of the hotel, its pools and fountains were dry as a result of water shortage.

Sousou is a native Gafsian who moved to capital Tunis in order to find work. Her sister Asma still lives in Gafsa. “There is no change,” said Asma. “After ten years you will see change – inshallah….”

Both sisters voted for Hizb Muqtamar (Congress pour le Republique), a centrist party in the ruling coalition along with the leftist party Ettakatol and the Islamist party Ennahda.

Asked if she thought the ruling coalition was doing a good job, Asma said, “I don’t think so…” adding that the new parties should do more crack down on endemic corruption. Already impoverished people, she said, have to pay for access to basic services and employment.

But despite this frustration, both sisters were quick to lay the ultimate blame for Gafsa’s problems on the door of the old dictatorship. “We are now at zero; it’s not easy to make changes now,” Asma said.

Problems do not end with migration to the comparatively prosperous coastal regions. People from Gafsa and similar regions are easily identified by their dialect of Arabic. As a result, they face blatant and widespread discrimination.

Rage over this injustice has frequently boiled over, even during the dictatorship when the authoritarian regime firmly supported the status quo. After major layoffs in 2008, people of the Gafsa governorate organised a mass strike that ended only when police began arresting and torturing organisers, and shooting protesters in the street.

The UGTT has played an ambiguous role in both the Gafsa uprising of 2008 and the later revolution. The UGTT was recognised by the dictatorship, and its top posts were always filled by sycophants more loyal to the regime than to their constituents.

But despite this the UGTT rank and file has been known for being stridently progressive and pro- democracy. Before the revolution the UGTT was the only major national institution where critics of the regime could attain some level of authority.

Since the revolution, the union has been at the forefront of demands for greater regional and economic equality.

Reached on the phone at his Gafsa office, the regional Secretary General of UGTT in Gafsa, Mohamed Sghaiyer Miraoui, supported the demonstrations and voiced the complaints of other people in his region.

“The mine workers have already addressed the previous government asking for more rights,” he told IPS. ” (We demand) the right of employment – unemployment nears 60 percent in parts of Gafsa governorate; compensation to the families of martyrs that died (in the uprisings of 2008 and 2011), medical insurance for accidents at the work place; and social security for retired employees. No government has responded to these rights ever. Only words.

“Concerning any upcoming strikes or sit-ins, the UGTT has a clear stand on this. UGTT welcomes and supports sit-ins that are peaceful and non-disturbing to public order and the work of the firms. It condemns, however, any strikes that block roads and prohibit other workers from doing their job.”

In Gafsa and the arid villages around it, the poverty and lingering revolutionary graffiti are striking reminders of both how far Tunisia has come in the last year and how far it still has to go. The government here faces an uphill battle to create jobs and fight inequality.

The price of bread has been a strong political force in Tunisia. Credit: Jake Lippincott/IPS.

By Jake Lippincott
TUNIS, Dec 10 2011 (IPS)

On the verge of officially forming a coalition government to run the country and rewrite the nation’s pre-revolution constitution, Tunisia’s dominant, Islamist political party Ennahda has come under fire for its economic neo-liberalism, both from opponents and from coalition partners.

After an election noted for its transparency, the major Tunisian parties are busy putting the finishing touches on the first democratic government in the nation’s history. The Islamist party Hizb Ennahda will get the most important positions, including the coveted post of prime minister.

A major reason for Ennahda’s popularity is its history of resistance against the old dictatorship. Its supporters see it as both the party of Islam and the party of revolution and change. However, when it comes to issues concerning economics and international finance, it generally advocates continuing the generally neo-liberal policies of the former dictatorship.

Ennahda dominated the October elections, winning three times as many seats as the next most popular party. However, since Ennahda failed to win an absolute majority it was obliged to form a coalition with two centre-left parties Congres Pour le Republique (CPR) and Ettakatol.

These parties are officially secular, and have long been wary of Ennahda’s Islamist background. However, recently these parties, other leftist groups and their supporters on the street have been increasingly criticising Ennahda’s policies.

Ennahda has been praised for its moderation, and has been able to win the support or at least toleration from secularists, big business, foreign governments and other groups traditionally distrustful of Islamist movements.

While Ennahda has been able to placate secularists by officially advocating personal and religious freedom, it is reaching out to the international financial community and big business by pledging to counterbalance its left-wing coalition partners.

One high profile debate that has recently broken out between the leftists and Islamists in the governing coalition regards Tunisia’s international debt.

Tunisia’s deposed dictatorship took out numerous international loans from developed nations and international organisations. Much of this money went to actually developing Tunisia, but given the rampant corruption and cronyism of the old regime, it is widely believed that a significant portion of this money was misappropriated. Many Tunisians believe that it is unjust to expect them to pay back loans that enriched a dictator.

Responding to this popular outrage, figures within Tunisia’s largest secular party, the CPR, want to audit Tunisia’s international debt, and stop payment on the portion of this that was found to have been illicitly used by the old regime.

Speaking to IPS, CPR parliamentarian and economic committee member Mabruka Embarak spoke about her views on the issue of foreign debt in general. “We are trying to be as independent as we can from these international (lending) institutions…we have a big problem of debt…we can’t just take loans and not look at our previous debt.”

Her views on repaying the debt supposedly misappropriated are even stronger. “We do have a right…to audit this debt. The part of the debt that served the regime, that was not meant to help Tunisian citizens that obviously was used for the mafia (former ruling families)…that is millions of dinars. Tunisian citizens will not carry this burden…(international lenders) gave these loans to a dictator and (they) should have known better.”

While making it clear she can’t speak for Ennahda, she said that the Islamist party “differs” with CPR on this issue.

Speaking from the Ennahda headquarters in Tunis, party representative Sayed Feyjani made it clear that Ennahda is committed to attracting foreign investment to the country. “Tunisia must be attractive to international investment. We should do everything we can do to avoid international debts, that’s excellent, but…we are against dogma and we need investment and we need to seek (investment) from where ever it comes.”

While canceling portions of the international debt may resonate among average Tunisians, many in Tunisia’s financial community find more common ground with Ennahda.

Fahdel Abdelkefi, president of the Tunisian stock exchange told IPS that he was impressed with Ennahda’s “extremely liberal” economic policies and hoped that they would balance out the more left-wing parties in their coalition.

Ennahda is generally seen here as a party of the working class, and their religious rhetoric has alienated many in the upper classes. Abdelkefi still expressed concerns about Ennahda’s social policies, but clearly sees them as likely to stop any radical moves by its coalition partners.

This is especially true, he says, when it comes to freezing any of Tunisia’s foreign debt, a policy which he decries as “populism”. “Freezing the payment of foreign debt would be the biggest catastrophe a country like Tunisia could know” and would cause Tunisia to “lose its investment grade for quite some time.”

He believes that foreign debt is not significant enough to warrant such drastic action. “All foreign debt is not all that important, it only represents 20 percent of Tunisia’s GDP. Tunisia has the means and capacity to pay back its debt like an honest state.”

While Abdelkefi sees paying back the foreign debt as an issue of national integrity, many Tunisians resent the west for its decades of support for the former dictatorship, and feel that it is morally wrong to expect them to pay for the former ruling family’s decadence.

The fact that Ennahda, despite its revolutionary credentials, has begun to look like the champion of big business and international finance could harm its reputation as the party of the downtrodden.

Tunisia has a long tradition of a large public sector, and many Tunisians rely on extensive subsidies to survive. International lenders like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have long been calling on the Tunisian government to trim these government expenditures. However, during the dictatorship small changes in the price of bread led to massive, violent street protests.

Ennahda surely knows this, and Ennahda representative Sayed Feyjani told IPS that despite the desire to get loans and investment, the party would not impose radical liberalisation. “(Any deal with the IMF) will be a negotiation, we need the public sector, we need jobs, it’s simple as that…definitely we are not going to make people starve.”