TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) – A growing area of youth unrest, used in a pit of economic frustration, sweeps Tunisia and worries its leadership to the top. After all, it is the country that caused the revolutions of the Arab Spring in 2011.
A third of the young people of the North African country are unemployed – and many are angry about their stagnant fortunes. For the fourth day in a row, they took to the streets in violent protests across the country of 11.7 million – from the capital of Tunis, to the cities of Kasserine, Gafsa, Sousse and Monastir.
The protests led to a muscular response from authorities fearing that the protests would be repeated, which led to the ouster of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali ten years ago. The army was deployed at four hotspots. Here’s a look at what’s going on:
Tunisia’s protest movement grows
Since Friday, protest groups growing by the day have been in force every night. They hold simultaneous, often violent demonstrations in cities around Tunisia.
The groups pelted municipal buildings with stones, threw Molotov cocktails, looted, vandalized and clashed with police. The unrest is concentrated in poor, densely populated districts where trust with law enforcement is already lacking.
The army was called in by the government on Sunday night to stem tensions and protect the country’s institutions. The police said that hundreds of protesters were arrested.
WHAT ARE THEY TRYING TO DO?
The exact causes are unclear, but the dire economic prospects of the stagnant North African country are at the heart of the discontent.
If they carry posters such as ‘Employment is a right, not a favor’, protesters are angry about the broken promises of democratically elected President Kais Saied and his government, which could not turn an economy on the brink of bankruptcy not.
Ten years after the history revolution, whose slogan was “employment, freedom and dignity”, Tunisians feel they have everything but it. According to the National Institute of Statistics, a third of Tunisia’s youth are unemployed and a fifth of the country lives below the poverty line.
Young people do not remember the oppression under Ben Ali and want jobs. They communicate this general frustration via social media, such as in neighboring Algeria, where a youth-based protest movement forced its longtime leader in 2019.
WHY DID THE PANDEMY MAKE THINGS WORSE?
The country’s divergent restrictions and a curfew since October to curb the spread of COVID-19 have exacerbated tensions.
The pandemic has particularly affected the most important tourism sector in Tunisia, which was once driven by its beautiful historic cities and white sandy beaches.
Flights are grounded and potential tourists experience home oppression and a general unwillingness to travel when contagious virus variants rush through countries and continents.
HOW do authorities respond?
Amnesty International has urged Tunisian authorities to use self-control to calm tensions and uphold the rights of the hundreds detained, but the authorities are increasingly relying on the military for aid and using tear gas against protesters.
The Interior Ministry justified the strong police response as necessary “to protect the physical integrity of citizens and public and private goods.”
Others disagree. The president of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights, Abderrahman Lahdhili, said that this approach was ‘not the most appropriate’, and the authorities should rather look at the underlying ‘deep reasons’. Lahdhili said 100,000 students leave their schools every year and 12,000 of them turn to illegal migration, taking overcrowded smugglers’ boats in a risky attempt to reach Europe. Others, according to him, are the prey to be recruited by extremist organizations.
ARE ISLAMIST FORCES BEHIND THE PROTESTS?
Saied, the Conservative president, on Monday night tried to speak directly to the protesters by visiting them unexpectedly to see them in the popular district of M’nihla, near Tunis.
He warned the protesters against extremist Islamic forces “acting in the shadows” which he said were trying to stir up chaos and destabilize the democratically elected government.
It is unclear whether this is merely a way to shift the blame of his government for the unrest, or whether Islamic forces are really behind the movement. Saied himself is an outsider who has won with the support of moderate Islamists.
The leader of the influential Islamic-inspired Ennahda party in Tunisia, Rached Ghannouchi, has condemned the recent “acts of looting and vandalism”.
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