Ahmed Sassi is a 32-year-old Tunisian who teaches philosophy. He is a member of an association representing unemployed graduates, and has been active in opposing recent budgetary reforms in Tunisia that introduced deepening austerity measures in the country, although his friends describe him as having no particular political allegiance.
On January 10th he was arrested outside his home in Tunis, in the Kabaria neighbourhood of the capital, and detained on suspicion of belonging to a criminal network. If tried and found guilty, he faces a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison. “There should be no confusion between thieves and looters and those who demonstrate,” said Moudhafer Laabidi, a friend of Sassi’s.
Police made hundreds of arrests during nationwide demonstrations, mostly by the young adult population, that erupted in about 20 towns across Tunisia earlier this month in protest against new stiff budgetary measures introduced on January 1st which included a hike in VAT and the introduction of social contributions, while the prices of essential goods have increased significantly.
One of the movements involved in the protests is Fech Nstanew? – meaning “What are we waiting for?” – a previously little-known group until it recently began tagging its slogans on the walls of buildings in Tunis. More than 300 of its members were arrested as it stepped up its campaign, although some were later freed from detention. “It began with the handing out of flyers and we don’t understand why because we are just exercising our right to demonstrate,” said Rafik Dridi, a member of the movement.
“If the government opens a dialogue with us and accepts our demands we intend to disband ourselves,” added Dridi. “It’s not a political movement but rather a campaign.”
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The budget reforms targeted by the protests were approved by Tunisia’s parliament on December 10th last year, and were made effective since January 1st. The austerity measures follow on an agreement between the Tunisian government and the International Monetary Fund on a four-year loan worth about 2.8 billion dollars, conditional upon a programme of economic reforms.
Dridi and his fellow protestors, like also those of another movement, Manich Msamah, which has for two years campaigned against corruption in the country, became stuck in a standoff with the authorities who largely turned a deaf ear to their demands, while highlighting the damage caused during the disturbances by looters and violent trouble-makers. Tunisia’s two principal political parties, the conservative Islamist Ennahda party and the centrist secularist Nidaa Tounes party, who together form the country’s governing coalition, issued statements calling for demonstrators to take measures to ensure their protests were peaceful, while accusing several of the protest movements of being driven and manipulated by leftist parties. At stake for the country’s political parties is the problem of retaining the support of their potential electorate during municipal elections due in May, and above all in next year’s presidential elections.
“It hurts when you see that during the revolution the nahdhaouis [Ennahda party militants] and the [leftist] Popular Front went around together in their neighbourhoods to prevent looting [while] today they accuse each other,” said Myriam Didier, a veteran activist with the Takriz cyber protest group founded in 1998. Takriz, which relaunched its activities in recent months, was an active opposition force under the dictatorship of president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who was deposed seven years ago in Tunisia’s largely peaceful revolution during the so-called “Arab Spring” upheaval. “I look on the demonstrations from a distance because it’s hard to understand clearly what’s happening, the street [movements] are very diverse at the moment,” added Didier.
Youssef Chérif, a Tunis-based political analyst with the Tunisian Institute of Strategic Studies, and an associate of Columbia University, agreed that there are several categories of demonstrators, and said that the agitation presented many similarities with the uprising against Ben Ali in 2011. “The first [category] is that of young students and graduates, who are the fruit of the revolution, who are pretty leftwing and anti-system but non-violent,” he observed. “However, they remain a minority [force], with no strong leadership and as a result are marginalised in the media and by the political sphere.”
But these largely politically non-affiliated movements have attracted the attention of some parties hoping to include the grievances with their own. These are what Chérif described as “political groups above all from the Left, quite anarchist, who seek to overturn the government” and who were active in 2011 and the political crisis in 2013 which followed the assassination of leftist leader Mohamed Brahmi. Earlier this month, three members of the Popular Front, a grouping of leftist parties, were arrested in the town of Gafsa, in the southwest of the country, in connection with the disturbances.
The situation became all the more uncertain in that, as during the upheaval in 2011, parallel spontaneous street demonstrations were mounted by poorer sections of the population. “There are also apolitical citizens for whom life has become more difficult since 2011, and who have quite simply had enough, especially with the effects of the 2018 budget, a situation amplified by the press and social media, and by the aforementioned Left,” said Chérif. “These people are often manipulated by politicians. They have turned out on many occasions since 2010, hoping that their conditions would change.”
“Then there are the trouble-makers and looters, a phenomenon that one can observe all over the world,” he added. “They are also present since 2011.”
The damage caused by looters and hooligans is abundantly highlighted, presented as justification for a security clampdown. That included the deployment of the army in several towns, including Thala, in western Tunisia, where a post of the National Guard, a defence force separate from the armed forces, was destroyed by protestors. Violent clashes with police in the northern town of Tebourba, about 30 kilometres west of Tunis, followed the death there on January 8th of a 45-year-old man, Khomsi Yeferni who demonstrators claimed was runover by a police vehicle. The authorities said he died from a respiratory condition.
The recent events were remindful of those of which led to the overthrow of the Ben Ali regime seven years ago. “The accusations levelled against the Left by the government resemble those that were heard in 2010-2011,” said Youssef Chérif. “One might say that the lessons have not been learnt by the people in power. The Left is present, but it does not monopolise the street.”
Agreeing to an interview earlier this month in the Bab El Khadra street market in the centre of Tunis, police officer Mohamed Ali Ayari spoke of his sympathy towards the protestors’ demands. “A kilo of bananas has become very expensive, like chicken and red meat, even the middle class is affected by the rise in prices which didn’t begin with the [new] budget law.”
The Tunisian authorities, meanwhile, have insisted that peaceful demonstrations would be tolerated. “But at the same time, they arrest activists, so what are you supposed to understand?” asked Rafik Dridi of the Fech Nstanew? protest movement.
“The government has understood how to contain the movement by arresting and then freeing activists, meaning it prevents a real leadership to be created at the heart of these movements of young people,” said Fadil Aliriza is a Tunis-based freelance journalist and political studies researcher. “They [the authorities] haven’t managed to establish relations with the young people, who for example have flocked to the Algerian border to leave the country. For the police, there is a tactic of the patriotic line, with hashtags like “don’t destroy your country” and with propaganda videos of their operations, with music in the background.”
During the disturbances in Tebourba earlier this month, one demonstrator, interviewed after police had used tear gas against the protestors, declared: “We know very well that the police don’t always use gratuitous violence, we know that the political orders come from above.” As the protests in Tebourba and elsewhere rocked the country, a spokesman for the interior ministry insisted that Tunisia’s newfound democracy following the fall of the old regime was “definitive”.
“Despite the fact that there are people who want to oppose citizens against the forces of law and order, I want to underline that there will never be a return to the old system of Ben Ali,” he said.
In fact, the current situation in Tunisia has become more complex than it was in 2011 because along with the protests over rising prices and social conditions are recriminations, frustrations and political score-settling that have built up over the past seven years. “As the seventh anniversary of the 2011 Tunisian uprising approaches, the country is drifting back toward its old authoritarian reflexes,” found a report by the NGO International Crisis Group, published on January 11th, adding: “The current drift toward authoritarianism has little chance of successfully establishing a Ben Ali-style regime, given the many socio-economic and political divisions and the newfound freedom enjoyed by the media over the past seven years. Any attempt to recreate an atmosphere of fear among the population would meet with fierce resistance. The government would not become any more effective and suppressed conflicts would end up resurfacing in more violent forms.”
Tunisian human rights activist Alaa Talbi, who heads the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, believes that a turning point could be reached if demonstrations by young protestors were to continue in significant numbers. “Beyond the trouble-makers and others, there is a real message from the young who want to speak out and be listened to,” he said. “It is a pivotal moment for the government, which must decide, or not, to enter into dialogue.”
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse