TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) – A growing wave of youth unrest, exploiting a well of economic frustration, is sweeping Tunisia and worrying its leadership to the top. After all, it is the country that started the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions.
A third of young people in the North African country are unemployed – and many are irritated by their stagnant wealth. For the fourth consecutive day, they took to the streets in violent demonstrations across the country of 11.7 million – from the capital Tunis, to the cities of Kasserine, Gafsa, Sousse and Monastir.
The protests generated a vigorous response from the authorities, who fear a repeat of the protests that led to the ousting of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali ten years ago. The army was deployed in four hot spots. Here’s a look at what’s going on:
THE TUNISIA PROTEST MOVEMENT IS GROWING
Since Friday, protest groups that are growing in size every day have been in place every night. They are carrying out simultaneous, often violent, demonstrations in cities around Tunisia.
The groups have been throwing stones at municipal buildings, throwing Molotov cocktails, looting, vandalizing and clashing with the police. The unrest is concentrated in poor and densely populated districts, where confidence in law enforcement is already lacking.
The army was summoned by the government on Sunday night to contain tensions and protect the country’s institutions. Police said hundreds of protesters were arrested.
WHAT ARE YOU PROTESTING?
The precise causes are not clear, but the dire economic outlook for the stagnant North African country is at the center of dissatisfaction.
Carrying placards like “Employment is a right, not a favor,” protesters are furious at the broken promises of democratically elected President Kaïs Saied and his government, which has failed to revert an economy to the brink of bankruptcy.
Ten years after the revolution that made history, whose slogan was “employment, freedom and dignity”, Tunisians feel they have everything but that. A third of Tunisia’s young people are unemployed and a fifth of the country lives below the poverty line, according to the National Statistics Institute.
Young people do not remember the repression under Ben Ali and want job opportunities. They are communicating this common frustration through social media, as in neighboring Algeria, where a youth-led protest movement forced its former leader out of power in 2019.
WHY DID PANDEMIC BECOME worse?
The country’s disparate blocking restrictions and a nighttime curfew since October to contain the spread of COVID-19 have exacerbated tensions.
The pandemic has particularly affected Tunisia’s main tourism sector, which has already been fueled by its beautiful historic cities and white sandy beaches.
The flights were disrupted and potential tourists face blockages at home and a general reluctance to travel when variants of contagious viruses are running across nations and continents.
HOW ARE THE AUTHORITIES RESPONDING?
Amnesty International has implored the Tunisian authorities to use restraint to defuse tensions and defend the rights of the many hundreds of detainees, but the authorities have increasingly relied on army aid and used tear gas against the demonstrators.
The Interior Ministry justified the police’s robust response as necessary “to protect the physical integrity of citizens and public and private property”.
Others disagree. The president of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, Abderrahman Lahdhili, said that this approach “is not the most appropriate” and that the authorities should instead examine the underlying “profound reasons”. Every year, Lahdhili said, 100,000 students drop out of school and 12,000 of them resort to illegal migration, going to overcrowded smugglers’ boats in a risky attempt to reach Europe. Others, he said, are victims of recruitment by extremist organizations.
ARE THE ISLAMIST FORCES BEHIND THE PROTESTS?
Saied, the conservative president, tried to speak directly to the protesters by making an unexpected visit on Monday night to see them in the popular M’nihla neighborhood, near Tunis.
He warned protesters against Islamic extremist forces “acting in the shadows”, which he said was trying to ferment chaos and destabilize the democratically elected government.
It is not clear whether this is simply a way of blaming his government for the unrest, or if Islamic forces are really behind the movement. Saied himself is a stranger who won with the support of moderate Islamists.
The leader of Tunisia’s influential Islamic-inspired Ennahda party, Rached Ghannouchi, condemned the recent “acts of pillaging and vandalism”.
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