Category Archives: Tunisia

‘A world problem’: immigrant families hit by Covid jab gap

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Families spread across rich and poor countries are acutely aware of relatives’ lack of access to vaccine

For months she had been dreaming of it and finally Susheela Moonsamy was able to do it: get together with her relatives and give them a big hug. Throughout the pandemic she had only seen her siblings, nieces and nephews fully “masked up” at socially distanced gatherings. But a few weeks ago, as their home state of California pressed on with its efficient vaccination rollout, they could have a proper reunion.

“It was such an emotional experience, we all hugged each other; and with tears in our eyes, we thanked God for being with us and giving us the opportunity to see each other close up again and actually touch each other,” she says. “We never valued a hug from our family members that much before.”

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Scores dead as migrant boat sinks off Tunisia

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Boat carrying migrants from Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea and Bangladesh was heading towards Italy from Libya when it sank

At least 43 people have drowned in a shipwreck off Tunisia as they tried to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy, while another 84 were rescued, humanitarian organisation the Tunisian Red Crescent has said.

The boat had set off from Zuwara, on Libya’s north-west coast, carrying migrants from Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea and Bangladesh, the humanitarian organisation said.

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‘They beat him’: fear and anger at latest police killing in Tunis

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Protests erupt again in Tunisian capital after man ‘beaten to death’ amid claims of police impunity

Almost everyone in the streets around Ahmed Ben Ammar’s house in the Tunis district of Sidi Hassine claims to have known him or his family. Nearly everyone also has a slightly different account of his death in police custody on Tuesday. Details vary but all agree that the 32-year-old was beaten to death by police this week.

Sidi Hassine is to the west of Tunisia’s capital, on the far side of the Sebkha Sijoumi wetlands and the hulking landfill at Borj Chakir, already years past its scheduled closure date. The smell and the mosquitoes fill the air. At one end of the road is a thriving market, at the other – near where Ben Ammar lived – cafes and shops line the dusty street.

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Protests in Tunisia: share your experiences

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We’d like to hear from those living and working in Tunisia about their views and experiences of the protests

A week of protests has taken place in Tunis after the death of a man in police custody and footage of another man being beaten and stripped by officers went viral. We’d like to speak to those caught up in the events about their experiences.

What are your views about the protests? Why are you taking part?

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Protests over police violence spread through Tunisian capital

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Demonstrators angry over footage showing officers stripping and beating man and death of another in custody

Tunisia’s capital has been rocked by a week of protests against police violence that began after the death of a man in police custody and footage that went viral of officers stripping and beating another man.

Six nights of demonstrations that began in the working-class districts of Sidi Hassine and Séjoumi in Tunis spread to other neighbourhoods on Monday night.

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Tunisia lockdown ends, despite Africa’s worst Covid death rate

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Pandemic fatigue and economic woes blamed for lack of action despite rapid rise in number of cases

Tunisia has ended its one-week lockdown, despite having the highest reported deaths per capita of any country in Africa.

Covid-19 cases in Tunisia were initially low last year, with a sweeping six-week lockdown involving the closure of borders and shutting down all but essential commercial activity appearing to halt the spread of the virus. However, since easing that original lockdown cases have increased, with daily reported infections and deaths now the highest in Africa, according to Our World in Data.

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Rescuers find 39 bodies off Tunisia after two boats sink

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Coastguards were able to save 165 people before rescue called off due to bad weather and nightfall

At least 39 migrants have drowned off Tunisia when two boats capsized, the defence ministry has said, as numbers risking the dangerous crossing to Europe continued to rise.

Rescuers pulled 165 survivors from the foundering boats to safety on Tuesday.

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What can we learn from Africa’s experience of Covid?

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Though a hundred thousand people have died, initial predictions were far worse, giving rise to many theories on ‘the African paradox’

As Africa emerges from its second wave of Covid-19, one thing is clear: having officially clocked up more than 3.8m cases and more than 100,000 deaths, it hasn’t been spared. But the death toll is still lower than experts predicted when the first cases were reported in Egypt just over a year ago. The relative youth of African populations compared with those in the global north – while a major contributing factor – may not entirely explain the discrepancy. So what is really going on in Africa, and what does that continent’s experience of Covid-19 teach us about the disease and ourselves?

“If anyone had told me one year ago that we would have 100,000 deaths from a new infection by now, I would not have believed them,” says John Nkengasong, the Cameroonian virologist who directs the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Incidentally, he deplores the shocking normalisation of death that this pandemic has driven: “One hundred thousand deaths is a lot of deaths,” he says.

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Pro-choice protests in Warsaw and Myanmar coup: 20 photos on human rights this week

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A roundup of the best photography on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Algeria to Uganda

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Migrant boat sinks off Lampedusa with one dead and 22 missing

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Tunisian navy had to end rescue effort early due to bad weather but pulled one body from the water

One migrant is dead and 22 others are missing after their boat sank in the Mediterranean sea off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the Tunisian navy has said.

Bad weather interrupted rescue operations around 100 kilometres (62 miles) north-west of Lampedusa, the navy said on Saturday, adding that the body of one migrant had been pulled from the water, while 22 were missing.

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Lawyers protesting against police in Tunisia allegedly attacked by officers

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The three men are said to be recovering from assaults after security forces are accused of targeting activists during unrest

Three lawyers are said to be recovering after being assaulted by police in the wake of protests in the Tunisian capital on Saturday.

According to the Tunisian Bar Association, Yassine Azaza and Rahhal Jallali were attacked by officers while they were making their way home after the demonstrations in Tunis. A third lawyer, Abdennaceur Aouini, was photographed surrounded by police officers in the city’s main street.

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Moufida Tlatli, first Arab woman to direct a feature film, dies aged 73

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Tunisian director of multi-award-winning The Silences of the Palace broke the mould with films about the trauma suffered by generations of women

Moufida Tlatli, the pioneering Tunisian film-maker hailed as the first Arab woman to direct a feature film, has died aged 73. News media said that she died on Sunday, with the news confirmed by the Tunisian ministry of culture.

Tlatli remains best known for her breakthrough 1994 feature The Silences of the Palace, a lyrical study of a woman’s return to an abandoned royal residence, which tackled the themes of exploitation and trauma as experienced across generations of Arab women. It won a string of international awards, including the Sutherland trophy at the London film festival for the most “original and imaginative” film of the year, and was named as one of Africa’s 10 best films by critic and director Mark Cousins. The film was inspired by her mother’s difficult life; in 2001, Tlatli told the Guardian she “was riven with guilt … It was so insupportable, exhausting, suffocating.”

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‘I will never give up’: Egypt’s exiles still dream of democracy

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Those who rose up against dictatorship believe their example will inspire another generation

Ten years ago they were overthrowing Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. Now they are in exile in Britain, under threat of imprisonment by the military regime. For Cairo’s revolutionaries, it has been a long journey of high hopes and broken dreams.

“I was part of a historical moment,” says Sayed, 39. He was working in the Middle East in December 2010 when Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor in Tunisia, set himself on fire in a protest against his treatment by local officials. Fuelled by social media coverage, the incident sparked protests around the region, including in Egypt, where crowds flocked to Tahrir Square in Cairo demanding the overthrow of Mubarak.

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‘Things are getting worse’: Tunisia protests rage on as latest victim named

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Police brutality and unemployment worsened by the pandemic continues to drive young protesters onto streets to demand reform

The latest victim of Tunisia’s current unrest has been named as Haykel Rachdi, from Sbeitla in Kasserine, near the Algerian border. He died of his injuries on Monday night after reportedly being struck on the head by a police teargas canister.

Protests were continuing on Wednesday, with police pushing back hundreds of mainly young demonstrators outside the country’s parliament in the capital, Tunis. One group had marched there from the working-class district of Hay Ettadhamen, in the north of the city. The protesters chanted refrains from the revolution of the winter of 2010–11 and anti-police slogans, while inside, politicians continued to debate whether to accept or reject a proposed new government, the fifth since 2019’s inconclusive elections.

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How the Arab spring engulfed the Middle East – and changed the world

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An era of uprisings, nascent democracy and civil war in the Arab world started with protests in a small Tunisian city. The unrest grew to engulf the Middle East, shake authoritarian governments and unleash consequences that still shape the world a decade later

A decade ago this month, protests forced Tunisia’s authoritarian president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, to flee his country. It was a quick and relatively peaceful revolution, coming after decades of stagnant but entrenched regimes across the Arab world.

Few at the time understood the power of the images of unrest being broadcast online and into homes across the Middle East. Within weeks, other significant protest movements would emerge, and by the middle of 2011, leaders in Cairo, Tripoli, Sana’a, Damascus and elsewhere were under serious pressure or had been swept away by a tidal wave of peaceful demonstrations and armed resistance.

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‘People are hungry’: why Tunisia’s youth are taking to the streets

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Unemployment – especially among the young – falling living standards and lockdowns have sparked riots across the country

Ettadhamen, a marginalised district on the outskirts of Tunis, wears unrest well. Over the weekend and into this week, violent protests have dominated life in this overlooked and restive place.

The district is not unique. Over the past few days, protests have erupted in working-class neighbourhoods in at least 15 locations across Tunisia, in response to declining living conditions, poverty and endemic unemployment, especially among the country’s young people.

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‘Preserve my son’s name’: families of Tunisia’s Arab spring martyrs fight on

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Delays in publication of official list of those killed and wounded provokes anger and claims of government indifference

Moslem Kasdallah rests on his crutches, the stump of his amputated leg on display. His voice hoarse, he yells the demands that, after years of delay, have brought him and the other wounded and bereaved of the Tunisian revolution to the steps of the government building they have been occupying since December.

Some are on hunger strike, others have sewn their lips shut. Kasdallah carries a bottle of fuel and a lighter, ready to self-immolate.

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Tunisia minister sacked and arrested in scandal over illegal waste from Italy

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Mustapha Aroui held along with 22 others after 200 containers of decaying household and medical waste discovered in July

Tunisia’s environment minister has been arrested following the attempted importation of household and hospital waste from Italy.

Mustapha Aroui was dismissed from his post and subsequently arrested on Sunday, along with several other people, including senior customs officials, members of its waste management agency, Agence Nationale de Gestion des Déchets (ANGed) and a Tunisian diplomat based in Naples.

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The Arab spring wasn’t in vain. Next time will be different | Nesrine Malik

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Lessons have been learned about how to convert the forces that demand equality into those that deliver it

At the end of 2010, I was en route to Sudan for Christmas, scouring Arabic social media in search of scraps of information about a story unfolding in Tunisia; a story the Arab media was censoring and the western media was still ignoring. A street trader, Mohammed Bouazizi, had set himself on fire in protest at the government in the city of Sidi Bouzid, sparking demonstrations that spread across the country.

Weeks before the protests toppled Tunisia’s president-for-life, you could see that something about this uprising was different. There was something about the way the protests resonated in households around the Arab world, the intensity of the moral outrage and the force of the momentum that felt new and exciting.

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Tunisia and the Arab spring 10 years on: ‘We tried to rise’

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When a young street seller set himself on fire to protest lack of employment opportunities and government corruption, Tunisia became the cradle of the Arab spring revolutions that swept the middle east. Less than a month later, the dictator Ben Ali had to flee the country he had ruled for 23 years. Ten years on, what change has the revolution brought and was the sacrifice of so many worth the price?

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