Tunis police block off city centre as thousands protest
Send a link to a friend
[February 06, 2021]
By Tarek Amara
TUNIS (Reuters) - Police locked down a
large area of central Tunis on Saturday, blocking roads as thousands of
protesters, backed by the country's powerful labour union, gathered in
Tunisia's biggest demonstration for years.
The rally was held to mark the anniversary of the 2013 killing of a
prominent activist and to protest against police abuses that
demonstrators say have imperilled the freedoms won in the 2011
revolution that triggered the "Arab spring".
Riot police deployed cordons around the city centre, stopping both cars
and many people from entering the streets around Avenue Habib Bourguiba
as thousands of people gathered, a Reuters witness said.
Unlike previous marches in the wave of street protests that have rippled
across Tunisia in recent weeks, Saturday's rally was backed by the UGTT
union, the country's most powerful political organisation with a million
members.
Protests, which began last month with clashes and rioting in deprived
districts over inequality, have increasingly focused on the large number
of arrests, and reports - denied by the Interior Ministry - of abuse of
detainees.
[to top of second column]
|
Mohammed Ammar, a member of parliament for the Attayar party, said
he had phoned the prime minister to protest against the closure of
central Tunis.
Protesters chanted slogans against the moderate Islamist Ennahda
party, a member of successive government coalitions, and reprised
the Arab Spring slogan: "The people want the fall of the regime".
A decade after Tunisia's revolution, its democratic political system
is in crisis, mired in endless squabbling between the president,
prime minister and parliament while the economy stagnates.
While some Tunisians, disillusioned by the fruits of the uprising,
are nostalgic for the better living conditions they remember from
the days of autocracy, others have decried a perceived erosion of
the freedoms that democracy secured.
For some, the febrile climate has recalled the political
polarisation after a suspected hardline Islamist assassinated
secular activist and lawyer Chokri Belaid in February 2013.
His death triggered a wave of mass protests in Tunisia that led to a
grand bargain between the main Islamist and secular political
parties to stop the country sinking into violence.
(Reporting by Tarek Amara; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by
Alison Williams and Frances Kerry)
[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |