Tunisia: Protests for Freedom One Month Ahead of the Presidential Election
More than a thousand Tunisians, many of them young people and women, demonstrated on Friday “in defense of rights and freedoms,” less than a month before a presidential election where the incumbent president, Kais Saied, accused of authoritarian drift, is running for a second term.
With chants of “Freedom, freedom” and “Down with dictatorship,” the protesters, estimated at between 1,000 and 1,500 by AFP correspondents, chanted slogans directly targeting Mr. Saied.
“It’s the end of the police state,” “Kais dictatorship, get out,” the protesters also called for the “release of political prisoners,” insisting that “the people want the fall of the regime.”
At least twenty opponents, including figures such as moderate Islamist Rached Ghannouchi and Abir Moussi, nostalgic for the regimes of Habib Bourguiba and Ben Ali, as well as former ministers and businessmen, have been imprisoned since the spring of 2023 on various charges, including “conspiracy against state security.”
Elected democratically in 2019, President Saied, seeking a second term on October 6, has been accused of authoritarian drift since he took full control of powers in the summer of 2021.
The activists gathered at the call of the newly formed “Tunisian Network for the Defense of Rights and Freedoms,” established in early September and composed of the Tunisian League for Human Rights, the Association of Democratic Women, and the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights.
“As young people, we came to say: enough, the situation is no longer tolerable, especially the violations of rights and freedoms,” said Nawras Hammadi, a 28-year-old activist, who denounced “the restrictions imposed on journalists, activists, and presidential candidates.”
In recent weeks, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have criticized the selection process for candidates, particularly the electoral authority’s disqualification of Mr. Saied’s most serious rivals. Several have withdrawn due to administrative obstacles, others because of legal proceedings, and some due to ineligibility sentences.
“Dream of Democracy”
Facing Mr. Saied, only two competitors remain: one of his former supporters, Zouhair Maghzaoui, a defender of pan-Arabism, and Ayachi Zammel, a liberal industrialist unknown to the general public, recently placed in provisional detention on suspicion of “forging sponsorships.”
“After three years of single-man rule, a power leaning toward authoritarianism, Tunisians must be able to choose their president with free and pluralistic elections,” said Wassim Hammadi, a 27-year-old activist from the Democratic Current (social-democratic).
In this tense context, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) announced on Friday the creation of an “international support committee for freedoms in Tunisia,” composed of 20 members from 13 countries, including the Iranian Shirin Ebadi, to “not abandon Tunisia to dictatorship and economic misery.” The committee calls for “free and transparent elections and the release of anyone unjustly detained.”
Judging it FIDH’s duty “to raise awareness of the situation in Tunisia,” Yosra Frawes, head of the organization’s regional office, expressed the desire to “initiate a wave of international solidarity” with a “Tunisian civil society that courageously fights for justice and freedom.”
Tunisia was the scene in 2011 of massive protests that led to the fall of the dictator Ben Ali and 10 years of democratic transition. FIDH refuses to see the “dream of democracy in the Arab world” be stifled, explained Ms. Frawes.
