HUNDREDS ARRESTED AS TUNISIANS TAKE TO STREETS
▶ Minors make up majority of those detained during protests calling for government reform and leaders to quit
About 100 protesters marched through Tunis city centre yesterday afternoon, calling for government reform and for Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and Speaker of Parliament Rached Ghannouchi to step down.
The government said that 632 people were arrested during the latest wave of protests, most of them minors.
Dozens of young protesters hurled rocks and fireworks at riot police in the working-class neighbourhood of Ettadhamen, on the outskirts of Tunisia’s capital, on Sunday evening.
Officers responded with a volley of tear gas.
The army was sent to support local police and secure vital sites in several towns and cities across the country, including Bizerte, Nabeul and Sousse.
Social media videos showed young people with their faces covered burning tyres and hurling rocks, then coughing as police responded with tear gas.
Noureddine Taboubi, secretary general of the General Tunisian Labour Union, yesterday acknowledged the legitimacy of the protesters’ anger but asked them to stop.
Interior Ministry spokesman Khaled Hayouni said dozens of children aged between 14 and 17 were among those rounded up during the protests and for
not obeying a curfew. Ten years ago, Ettadhamen was one of the early sites of protests that would eventually overwhelm the capital and force president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power.
Those protests were driven largely by economic concerns, with slogans such as,“Work, freedom, national dignity. Employment is a right.”
In the decade since Ben Ali’s fall, the economic situation for
young people in Tunisia has only deteriorated. More than one in three is unemployed, according to the World Bank. GDP shrunk by 9 per cent while consumer prices continue to increase.
Tourism, one of Tunisia’s major drivers of revenue, has ground to a halt during the pandemic.
That has left many in towns such as Sousse, a regular destination for European holidaymakers, without jobs and with few options.
Videos circulated overnight of young people breaking into stores and carting off goods in the city.
A four-day government lockdown and 4pm curfew at the weekend, designed to stem the rise in coronavirus infections, exacerbated the situation in neighbourhoods such as Ettadhamen, where many subsist on day labour.
While infection rates are high in these tightly packed neighbourhoods, most residents resisted another shutdown over fears of lost wages.
That sentiment is felt in poor neighbourhoods across the country.
Yesterday, photographs were shared of graffiti sprayed on walls in the Kabaria neighbourhood of Tunis.
Among the slogans was: “The revolution of the hungry.”