The absence of Tunisia’s Constitutional Court became a prickly issue after the deterioration of former President Beji Caid Essebsi’s health. The problem has now resurfaced with regard to swearing-in of new ministers by the current president. Other constitutional authorities, in the meantime, seem to have been forgotten altogether.
After more than a week of protests across the nation following a sudden, government-imposed lockdown on the 10th anniversary of the January 14, 2011 revolution, security forces have arrested over 1600 people, 600 of them children, according to Yassine Azaza, a human rights activist and volunteer lawyer on behalf of the Tunisian League of Human Rights (LTDH by its French acronym). Those numbers were given to Nawaat/Meshkal on January 20, 2021, but since then the numbers have increased and human rights activists and organizations said they are struggling to keep track.
In a government building in downtown Tunis, protesters occupying the space recently confronted the official in charge. “Give me my right or I will set myself on fire,” screamed Akrem Labiadh on January 6, 2021.
Hundreds of healthcare staff and workers, including doctors, nurses, medical students and other staff held a protest march on Tuesday, December 8, which they dubbed a ‘day of rage’ for the Tunisian public health sector. The focus of protesters demands was on public investment in healthcare facilities, equipment and infrastructure following the death of 27-year-old surgical resident, Badr Eddine Aloui. Aloui fell to his death on December 3 from the fifth floor in the Jendouba Regional Hospital due to an elevator dysfunction.
On October 20, the government and the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) reached an agreement to resolve the precarious working conditions of so-called “site workers” [ommel hadha’ir] who are hired by the state and work in local administration and agriculture. Yet many ‘site workers’ who had pushed authorities to resolve their status, think the agreement falls short of promises made to them by successive governments. The deal has sparked calls for protest across the country, including a mass mobilization in front of Parliament on Wednesday, December 9, a day that a ‘site worker’ coordination grouping has called a “day of rage.”
The town of Tabarka, nestled between green mountains and the sea, close to the Algerian border, boasts a natural beauty that has made it a major tourist attraction for decades. In 2017, nearly a quarter of a million tourists visited Tabarka and its nearby mountain villages according to one report. Despite the beauty, the town’s main trash dump had been near one of the main roads entering the town for years until 2015, when it was finally moved. But the new dump location is near a hospital, close to a training school for the hospitality sector, and may be leaking into local water resources. When locals living near the dump protested earlier this year by blocking a national highway, calling on officials to move it elsewhere, several were briefly detainedby police.
Harassment, revenge porn, blackmail: 80 percent of women in Tunisia have experienced violence on the internet. This violence is multifaceted and rampant on social media. In an effort to stop it, some have decided to publicly denounce their aggressors on Facebook through the Ena Zeda groups. But is this enough to stem the violence?
As the number of Tunisians infected with Covid-19 continues to climb, hospital facilities are on the frontlines without the means they need to handle the situation. According to the National Medical Council (CNOM), three physicians have died, ten have been hospitalized and hundreds of medical and paramedical personnel have been infected with the virus. How are medical and paramedical professionals handling the situation?
The general lockdown imposed in Tunisia during the first wave of Covid-19 had disastrous consequences for the most disadvantaged segments of the population. A new study published by the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) examines the situation of women farm laborers, cleaning ladies in hospitals, construction workers as well as waiters at cafés, restaurants and bars. Employees already in precarious situations in Tunisia have become more vulnerable than ever.
When Tunisia went into lockdown from March to June, most private sector businesses experienced at least some stoppage of work. As might be expected, the sector that saw the least closures was the health sector, where 45 percent of businesses remained open, according to an official study. But in the number two position was the information and communication sector—which includes call centers—where 42 percent stayed open without interruptions. According to a new report looking at the rights of call center workers, call centers were “granted authorization to maintain physical operations as an ‘essential service’” even though many maintained “tightly packed spaces with shared workstations and equipment…fertile ground for the virus to spread.”
On Tuesday, October 6, demonstrators gathered in front of Parliament to protest a draft law under discussion seeking to grant security forces legal immunity from prosecution for use of force—the first of several protests against the law this week. Police forces then assaulted protesters and detained four of them at a police station in the Bardo neighborhood. Meshkal/Nawaat spoke with the four people who were detained and later released about the police abuse they experienced.
With opposition to political Islam as her hobbyhorse, the former RCD member and current president of the Free Destourian Party (PDL) Abir Moussi has become the figurehead of opposition to Ennahdha. This positioning on the political chessboard has resulted in a meteoric rise. But is she really opposed to the Islamists’ social vision? Is she really progressive?
A hostage to its « sacro-patriarchal » paradigm, Tunisia’s Code of Personal Status has become a glass ceiling—blocking women’s access to full and complete citizenship and preventing them from enjoying all of their human rights—in a society where the demand for equality between men and women presents a permanent threat to a public order that is gendered.
Some 715 out-of-wedlock births were reported in 2019, according to the annual report on the activities of childhood protection officers. The majority of these births (44.33%, or 317 births) took place in the central-eastern part of Tunisia. What is the fate of single mothers in a society that ostracizes them? Nawaat went to meet three of these young mothers at Beity, a shelter that offers assistance to women in distress and victims of violence.
Lina Attalah, Mada Masr’s editor in chief, was arrested on Sunday May 17, 2020, outside the Tora Prison complex in Cairo. Law enforcement officials informed her colleagues that she will be held overnight and will appear before the prosecutor tomorrow morning. Attalah was arrested while she was interviewing Laila Soueif, the mother of imprisoned activist Alaa Abd El Fattah, who had been on a hunger strike for 35 days. She was released on bail later in the evening.
Shams, an association that campaigns for the decriminalization of homosexuality in Tunisia, announced on its Facebook page that the marriage of a French man and Tunisian man in France had been recognized by the Tunisian government. The marriage was recorded on the Tunisian spouse’s birth certificate. Upon the announcement, several English-language media outlets relayed the information, tentatively qualifying Tunisia as “the first Arab country to recognize gay marriage”.
Numerous are the reports of arbitrary law enforcement and abuse of power since the confinement was first imposed in Tunisia. Certain members of security forces have used unwarranted verbal and physical violence against citizens. Not even activists collecting medication for hospitals have been spared this harassment.
Sub-Saharan Africans in Tunisia number 4,200 asylum seekers and 7,000 students, according to the National Observatory of Migration. Since the beginning of the confinement period, many of these migrants, both declared and irregular, are living in extreme precarity. Some of their stories have circulated on social media alerting the public to the vulnerability of those unable to afford rent and meet their most basic needs.
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