Fifteen years in the past, a Tunisian fruit vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, despairing at official corruption and police violence, walked to the centre of his hometown of Sidi Bouzid, set himself on hearth, and adjusted the area eternally.
A lot of the hope triggered by that act lies in ruins. The revolutions that adopted in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria have price the lives of tens and hundreds earlier than, in some circumstances, giving option to chaos or the return of authoritarianism.
Really useful Tales
record of 4 objectsfinish of record
Solely Tunisia appeared to fulfil the promise of the “Arab Spring”, with voices from around the globe championing its democratic success, ignoring financial and political failings by a lot of its post-revolutionary historical past that stirred discontent.
At the moment, a lot of Tunisia’s post-revolutionary features have been forged apart within the wake of President Kais Saied’s dramatic energy seize in July 2021. Labelled a coup by his opponents, it ushered in a brand new hardline rule in Tunisia.
Burying the hopes of the revolution
Over the next years, in addition to briefly shuttering parliament – solely reopening it in March 2023 – Saied has rewritten the structure and overseen a relentless crackdown on critics and opponents.
“They primarily got here for everybody; judges, civil society members, folks from all political backgrounds, particularly those that have been speaking about unifying an opposition in opposition to the coup regime,” Kaouther Ferjani, whose father, 71-year-old Ennahdha chief Stated Ferjani, was arrested in February 2023.
In September, Saied stated his measures have been a continuation of the revolution triggered by Bouzazzi’s self-immolation. Portray himself a person of the folks, he railed in opposition to anonymous “lobbyists and their supporters” who thwart the folks’s ambitions.
Nonetheless, whereas many Tunisians have been cowed into silence by Saied’s crackdown, they’ve additionally refused to participate in elections, now little greater than a procession for the president.
In 2014, in the course of the nation’s first post-revolution presidential election, about 61 p.c of the nation’s voters turned out to vote.
By final 12 months’s election, turnout had halved.
“Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule has definitively buried the hopes and aspirations of the 2011 revolution by systematically crushing elementary rights and freedoms and placing democratic establishments below his thumb,” Bassam Khawaja, deputy director at Human Rights Watch, advised Al Jazeera English.
Within the wake of the revolution, many throughout Tunisia grew to become activists, searching for to contain themselves in forging what felt like a brand new nationwide identification.
The variety of civil society organisations exploded, with hundreds forming to foyer in opposition to corruption or promote human rights, transitional justice, press freedom and girls’s rights.
On the identical time, political reveals competed for house, debating the path the nation’s new identification would take.
“It was a tremendous time,” a political analyst who witnessed the revolution and stays in Tunisia stated, asking to stay nameless. “Anyone with something to say was saying it.
“Nearly in a single day, we had a whole bunch of political events and hundreds of civil society organisations. Lots of the political events shifted or merged… however Tunisia retained an lively civil society, in addition to retaining freedom of speech all the way in which as much as 2022.”
Threatened by Saied’s Decree 54 of 2022, which criminalised any electronic communication deemed by the federal government as false, criticism of the ruling elite throughout the media and even on social networks has largely been muzzled.
“Freedom of speech was one of many few lasting advantages of the revolution,” the analyst continued.
“The financial system failed to select up, companies didn’t actually enhance, however we had debate and freedom of speech. Now, with Decree 54, in addition to commentators simply being arrested for no matter purpose, it’s gone.”
In 2025, each Amnesty Worldwide and Human Rights Watch slammed Tunisia’s crackdown on activists and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs).
In a press release earlier than the prosecution of six NGO staff and human rights defenders working for the Tunisian Council for Refugees in late November, Amnesty pointed to the 14 Tunisian and worldwide NGOs that had their actions suspended by courtroom order over the earlier 4 months.
Included have been the Tunisian Affiliation of Democratic Girls, the Tunisian Discussion board for Social and Financial Rights, the media platform Nawaat and the Tunis department of the World Organisation in opposition to Torture.
‘Plotting in opposition to state safety’
Dozens of political figures from post-revolution governments have additionally been arrested, with little concern for social gathering affiliation or ideology.
In April 2023, 84-year-old Rached Ghannouchi, chief of what had been Tunisia’s essential political bloc, the Ennahdha Social gathering, was arrested on expenses of “plotting in opposition to state safety”.
Based on his daughter, Yusra, after a collection of subsequent convictions, Ghannouchi at the moment faces an additional 42 years in jail.
Later the identical 12 months, Ghannouchi’s principal critic, Abir Moussi, the chief of the Free Destourian Social gathering, was jailed on quite a lot of expenses.
Critics dismiss the costs, saying the standards for arrest have been the particular person’s potential to rally opinion in opposition to Saied.
“This isn’t simply the case for my father,” Yusra continued, referring to others, such because the main post-coup opposition determine Jawhar Ben Mubarak.
“Different politicians, judges, journalists, and abnormal residents … have been sentenced to very heavy sentences, with none proof, with none respect for authorized procedures, just because Tunisia has now sadly been taken again to the exact same dictatorship in opposition to which Tunisians had risen in 2010.”
Ghannouchi and Moussi, together with dozens of former elected lawmakers, stay in jail. The political events that when vied for energy within the nation’s parliament are largely absent.
Of their place, since Saied’s revised 2022 structure weakened parliament, is a physique that’s no longer a threat to the president.
“The outdated parliament was extremely fractious, and did itself few favours,” stated Hatem Nafti, essayist and creator of Our Good friend Kais Saied, a e book criticising Tunisia’s new regime. He was referring to the ammunition offered to its detractors by a chaotic and infrequently violent parliament.
“Nonetheless, it was democratically elected and blocked laws that its members felt would hurt Tunisia.
“Within the new parliament, members really feel the necessity to discuss powerful and even be impolite to ministers,” Nafti continued. “But it surely’s actually only a efficiency… Almost all of the members are there as a result of they agree with Kais Saied.”
Hopes that the justice system would possibly act as a verify on Saied have faltered. The president has continued to transform the judiciary to a design of his personal making, together with by sacking 57 judges for not delivering verdicts he wished in 2022.
By the 2024 elections, that effort appeared full, with the judicial opposition to his rule that remained, within the form of the administrative court, rendered subservient to his personally appointed electoral authority, and probably the most critical rivals for the presidency jailed.
“The judiciary is now nearly solely below the federal government’s management,“ Nafti continued. “Even below [deposed President Zine El Abidine] Ben Ali you had the CSM [Supreme Judicial Council], which oversaw judges’ appointments, promotions, and disciplinary issues.
“Now that solely exists on paper, with the minister of justice capable of decide exactly what judges go the place and what judgements they’ll ship.”
Citing what he stated is the “shameful silence of the worldwide group that when supported the nation’s democratic transition”, Khawaja stated: ”Saied has returned Tunisia to authoritarian rule.”
