The latest victim of Tunisia’s current unrest has been named Haykel Rachdi, from Sbeitla in Kasserine, near the Algerian border. He died of his injuries on Monday night, after being hit in the head by a police tear gas bomb.
The protests continued on Wednesday, with police pushing hundreds of protesters, mostly young people, in front of the country’s parliament in the capital, Tunis. A group marched there from the working-class neighborhood of Hay Ettadhamen, in the north of the city. Protesters chanted choruses of the 2010-11 winter revolution and anti-police slogans, while inside, politicians continued to debate whether to accept or reject a proposed new government, the fifth since the inconclusive elections of 2019.
Unrest continues to dominate much of public life. Across Tunisia, civil society groups and people from marginalized districts are demanding economic development, an end to police brutality and the release of some 1,400 people trapped in the riots. Tunisia has been plagued by internal political struggles and the police force has remained almost totally unreformed since the revolution that its own actions helped to unleash.
Even before the pandemic destroyed the country’s vital tourist industry, Tunisia’s economy was struggling. Unemployment – one of the main drivers of social unrest – remained rooted in about 15% of the workforce across the country, rising to 36% between 15 and 24 years old, a prominent demographic among those who are now demonstrating.
In Ezzahrouni, a marginalized district west of central Tunis, Nassredine described the poverty that drove youth in the district into violence. Refusing to provide his surname, he said that, despite his four degrees, he had not worked for two years. Instead, he was forced to rely on donations from his mother, a retiree. “When I see people migrating [to Europe] illegally, I really can’t blame them, ”he said,“ things are getting worse. Every place is closed now, ”he said.
Despite being praised as one of the successes of the Arab spring, instability has continued to plague Tunisia in the past decade, as its successive governments have failed to deal with the huge gap between rich and poor. The last reshuffle of the country’s coalition government included the appointment of four ministers accused of corruption or conflict of interest and was explicitly rejected by the president, Kais Saied. This undermined any hope of the kind of political consensus that Tunisia needs to tackle the pandemic and carry out the systemic reforms that protesters seek.
According to the International Monetary Fund, the country’s already dying economy contracted by 8.2% “unprecedented” in 2020. The drop was felt across Tunisia, but nowhere else than in the surrounding poor neighborhoods. in Tunis and in difficult inland regions where, even before the pandemic, unemployment reached 30%. In these areas, with the pandemic closing opportunities for the kind of casual daily work that kept many families afloat, anger over government inaction, exacerbated by police violence, exploded.
Along the street, Nassredine’s comments coincided with the thoughts of four young people huddled at a bus stop sharing jokes and cigarettes.
About a year and a half ago, Ahmed, 23, tried to leave Tunisia after saving 7,000 Tunisian dinars (about £ 1,800) to take a boat to Europe. He was captured and returned shortly after leaving for the sea, without his money and having lost the chance of a new life.
Aymen, a 23-year-old police officer, showed a photo of him masked and injured in the leg by a stone thrown during the protests. He asked to be detached from his own neighborhood, reluctant to confront some of his friends who participated in the unrest.
Aymen was welcomed at the shelter, but the actions of other policemen in Tunisia once again called attention to a culture of brutality and impunity that has not changed since the 2010-11 revolution. Loads of tear gas and batons were launched against protesters, both peaceful and volatile, with tiresome regularity.
The Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH) estimated that of the 1,400 protesters arrested so far, approximately 30% were minors. He said that few lawyers were offered and none of those who claimed to have been beaten were examined clinically.
On Monday, a joint report by the online newspaper Meshkal and the blog Nawaat contained blunt accusations of police violence and arbitrary arrests of the families of those now detained. In one report, the mother of a 16-year-old described how she arrived at the police station to see policemen kicking her son “like a ball” while interrogating him.
The Interior Ministry has promised to investigate some of the abuse allegations, as well as a video that appears to show a police officer shooting tear gas at a home. However, supported by powerful unions, convictions by officers on duty are unlikely.