Hundreds defy ban and march in Tunis
TUNIS: Hundreds of people marched in central Tunis on Saturday against inequality and police brutality, in defiance of a ban on demonstrations and as security forces tried to block off the city’s main central avenue.
Protesters chanted “the people want the fall of the regime” - a chant popularised during the so-call Arab Spring a decade ago - and held up banners and slogans decrying the security response to more than a week of demonstrations and nightly clashes between youths and police in cities across Tunisia.
The protests, 10 years ater a popular revolt against autocratic rule introduced democracy in Tunisia, represent the biggest bout of political unrest in several years, with police detaining hundreds of people.
“We can’t accept a police state in Tunisia 10 years ater the revolution. It is shameful,” said Mahmoud, a young cafe worker who did not give his family name.
While the youths clashing with riot police ater dark in poor districts of Tunisian cities have voiced few clear political aims, daytime protests have focused on the lack of jobs and on the police response to demonstrations.
The COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated an already dire economy in Tunisia, where many young people seek only to emigrate to Europe and see few opportunities at home.
At Habib Bourguiba Avenue, the stately treelined thoroughfare running from the sea up to the old city of Tunis, police placed barricades to stop protesters gathering.
Demonstrators instead rallied outside the central bank building and marched through the city, plainclothes police moving on each side with two-way radios. The government banned protests last week in what it said was an atempt to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
Though protesters later managed to reach Habib Bourguiba, a symbolic focal point of the 2011 uprising, the atempt to close off the avenue underscored government unease at the momentum of the protests.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on Friday that Tunisia’s fiscal deficit could exceed 9% of GDP and urged the country to control energy subsides, transfers to state companies and wages.
The 2021 budget aims to cut the fiscal deficit to 6.6 percent but the IMF, following a mission in Tunisia, issued a statement calling for specific measures to back this objective.