TUNISIA, Tunisia (AP) – A growing field of youth unrest, taking advantage of a well of economic frustration, is sweeping Tunisia and worrying its leadership to the top. After all, it is the country that triggered the revolutions of the Arab Spring of 2011.
One-third of young people in the North African nation are unemployed and many are angry at their stagnant fortune. For the fourth day in a row, they have taken to the streets in violent demonstrations of 11.7 million people across the country, from the capital of Tunis, to the cities of Kasserine, Gafsa, Sousse and Monastir.
The protests have provoked a muscular response from authorities who fear repeating the protests that led to the ouster of strong President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali ten years ago. The army has deployed at four hot spots. Here’s a look at what’s happening:
THE TUNISIA PROTEST MOVEMENT IS GROWING
Since Friday, protest groups that are growing in size every day have been in place every night. They organize simultaneous often violent demonstrations in Tunisian cities.
The groups have been enveloping municipal buildings with stones, throwing Molotov cocktails, looting, vandalizing and clashing with police. The unrest is concentrated in poor and densely populated districts where there is already a lack of confidence in law enforcement.
The government called in the army on Sunday night to quell tensions and protect the country’s institutions. Police in riot gear stormed a rally on Friday, removing hundreds of protesters by truck.
WHAT DO THEY PROTEST?
The exact causes are not clear, but the dire economic outlook for the stagnant North African country is at the center of dissatisfaction.
Carrying banners such as “Employment is a right, not a favor,” protesters are angry at the unfulfilled promises of the democratically elected president, Kaïs Saied, and his government, which has failed to turn an economy on the brink of collapse. the bankruptcy.
Ten years after the historic revolution, which had as its motto “occupation, freedom and dignity”, Tunisians feel they have nothing more than that. One-third of Tunisia’s young people are unemployed and one-fifth of the country lives below the poverty line, according to the National Statistics Institute.
Young people do not remember the repression of Ben Ali and want job opportunities. They are communicating this common frustration through social media, such as in neighboring Algeria, where a youth-led protest movement forced its longtime leader in 2019.
WHY DID THE PANDEMIC MAKE THINGS LONGER?
The country’s various blockade restrictions and a night curfew since October to contain the spread of COVID-19 have exacerbated tensions.
The pandemic has especially affected Tunisia’s key tourism sector, once driven by its beautiful historic cities and white sand beaches.
Flights have been established and potential tourists face blockages at home and have a general reluctance to travel when variants of contagious viruses run across countries and continents.
HOW DO THE AUTHORITIES RESPOND?
Amnesty International has urged Tunisian authorities to use restraint to calm tensions and defend the rights of hundreds of detainees, but authorities have increasingly relied on the army for help and used tear gas against protesters.
The Interior Ministry has justified the strong police 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 look at the underlying “deep reasons”. Every year, Lahdhili said, 100,000 students drop out of school and 12,000 of them resort to illegal migration, carrying crowded smugglers ’boats in a risky attempt to reach Europe. Others, he said, fall prey to recruitment by extremist organizations.
ARE THE ISLAMIST FORCES BEHIND THE PROTESTS?
Saied, the Conservative president, tried to speak directly to protesters by making an unexpected visit on Monday evening to see them in the popular M’nihla district near Tunis.
He warned protesters against extremist Islamist forces “acting in the shadows,” claiming they were trying to ferment chaos and destabilize the democratically elected government.
It is unclear whether this is simply a way to stave off his government’s blame for the unrest or whether Islamist forces are really behind the movement. Saied himself is an outsider who won with the support of moderate Islamists.
The leader of the influential Islamist-inspired Ennahda party in Tunisia, Rached Ghannouchi, has condemned the recent “acts of looting and vandalism.”
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