TUNIS: Tunisians took to the streets of downtown Tunis on Saturday over what they described as President Kais Saied ‘s increasingly authoritarian rule and demanding the release of all jailed political prisoners.
The rally, held under the banner “Against Injustice,” brought together families of political detainees and activists from different ideological backgrounds.
The demonstration drew more than 1,000 protesters, some dressed in black and chanting anti-regime slogans, including “The people want to overthrow the regime,” “What a great country! Oppression and tyranny!” and “No fear no terror, the street belongs to the people.”
The protest came as part of a broader surge in protests nationwide over political and economic turmoil under Saied’s rule. On Thursday, Tunisian journalists protested against the widening crackdown on the freedom of the press and the temporary suspension of several prominent civil society organizations.
Protesters also called out Saied’s interference in the judiciary and accused him of using the police to target political opponents.
Ayoub Amara, one of the organizers, told reporters on Saturday that the protest aimed to highlight the plight of those held in Tunisian prisons for their political opinions. He said it also touched on other broader grievances, including environmental protests convulsing the phosphate-producing city of Gabes and arbitrary arrests under anti-terrorism laws.
“All the progress of the past 14 years has been overturned,” Amara said. ” Tunisia is big enough for all Tunisians, and no single person can rule it according to his whims.”
Monia Brahim, the wife of jailed opposition figure Abdelhamid Jlassi, said she joined the march because she believes “many Tunisians are facing deep injustice.”
“I came to defend my rights as a citizen,” she told The Associated Press. “Political prisoners know for a fact that they are in prison to pay the price for their principles, their constitutional right for civil and political activism, and are being held hostage by the regime established today in Tunisia.”
Among those detained, some are currently on hunger strike including constitutional law professor Jawher Ben Mbarek who has been striking for over 20 days.
Several rights groups have raised increasing alarm over the growing scale of repression in Tunisia. Human Rights Watch has said that over 50 people, including politicians, lawyers, journalists and activists, have been subjected to arbitrary arrest or prosecution since late 2022, for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly or political activity.
The rights group also warned that broad anti-terrorism and cybercrime laws were being utilized to criminalize dissent and tame all forms of free speech.
Saied, who suspended parliament and consolidated all branches of power in July 2021, said his actions were necessary to root out corruption, eliminate “traitors” and restore state institutions.
Hundreds protest in Tunisia over president’s escalating crackdown on freedoms
https://arab.news/z57wp
Hundreds protest in Tunisia over president’s escalating crackdown on freedoms
- The rally, held under the banner “Against Injustice,” brought together families of political detainees and activists from different ideological backgrounds
- Protesters also called out Saied’s interference in the judiciary and accused him of using the police to target political opponents
Foreign women linked to Daesh group in Syrian camp hope for amnesty after government offensive
- Many of the women are either wives or widows of Daesh fighters who were defeated in Syria
- “There were changes in the behavior of children and women. They became more hostile,” the camp’s director said
ROJ CAMP, Syria: Foreign women linked to the Daesh group and living in a Syrian camp housing more than 2,000 people near the border with Iraq are hoping that an amnesty may be on the horizon after a government offensive weakened the Kurdish-led force that guards the camp.
The women spoke to The Associated Press on Thursday in northeast Syria’s Roj camp, where hundreds of mostly women and children linked to Daesh have been held for nearly a decade.
The camp remains under control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which until recently controlled much of northeastern Syria. A government offensive this month captured most of the territory the group previously held, including the much larger Al-Hol camp, which is holding nearly 24,000 mostly women and children linked to Daesh.
Many of the women are either wives or widows of Daesh fighters who were defeated in Syria in March 2019, marking the end of what was once a self-declared caliphate in large parts of Iraq and Syria.
The most well-known resident of the Roj camp, Shamima Begum, was 15 when she and two other girls fled from London in 2015 to marry Daesh fighters in Syria. Begum married a Dutch man fighting for Daesh and had three children, who all died.
Last month, Begum lost her appeal against the British government’s decision to revoke her UK citizenship. Begum refused to speak to AP journalists at the camp.
The director of the Roj camp, Hakmiyeh Ibrahim, said that the government’s offensive on northeast Syria has emboldened the camp residents, who now tell guards that soon they will be free and Kurdish guards will be jailed in the camp instead.
“There were changes in the behavior of children and women. They became more hostile,” the camp’s director said. “It gave them hope that the Daesh group is coming back strongly.”
Since former Syrian President Bashar Assad was toppled in a lightning rebel offensive in December 2024, the country’s new army is made up of a patchwork of former insurgent groups, many of them with Islamist ideologies.
The group led by now-interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa was once linked to Al-Qaeda although Al-Sharaa’s group and Daesh were rivals and fought for years. Since becoming president, Al-Sharaa — formerly known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed Al-Golani — has joined the global coalition against Daesh.
Camp residents hope for amnesty
One woman from Tunisia who identified herself only as Buthaina, pointed out that Al-Sharaa was removed from the UN and US lists of terrorists.
“People used to say that Al-Golani was the biggest terrorist. What happened to him later? He became the president of Syria. He is not a terrorist any more,” she said. “The international community gave Al-Golani amnesty. I should be given amnesty too.”
She added, “I did not kill anyone or do anything.”
The camp director said more than 2,300 people are housed in the Roj camp. They include a small number of Syrians and Iraqis, but the vast majority of them — 742 families — come from nearly 50 other countries, the bulk of them from states in the former Soviet Union.
That is in contrast to Al-Hol camp, where most residents are Syrians and Iraqis who can be more easily repatriated. Other countries have largely been unwilling to take back their citizens. Human rights groups have for years cited poor living conditions and pervasive violence in the camps.
The US military has begun moving male Daesh detainees from Syrian prisons to detention centers in Iraq, but there is no clear plan for the repatriation of women and children at the Roj Camp.
“What is happening now is exactly what we have been warning about for years. It is the foreseeable result of international inaction,” said Beatrice Eriksson, the cofounder of the children rights organization Repatriate the Children in Sweden. “The continued existence of these camps is not an unfortunate by-product of conflict, it is a political decision.”
Some women don’t want to go home
Some of the women interviewed by the AP said they want to go back home, while others want to stay in Syria.
“I did not come for tourism. Syria is a Muslim country. Germany is all infidels,” said a German woman who identified herself only as Aysha, saying that she plans to stay.
Another woman, a Belgian who identified herself as Cassandra, said she wants to get out of the camp but would like to stay in the Kurdish-controlled area of Syria.
She said that her French husband was an Daesh fighter killed in the northern city of Raqqa, once considered the de facto capital by Daesh. She said Belgium has only repatriated women who had children, unlike her. She was 18 when she came to Syria, she said.
Cassandra added that when fighting broke out between government forces and Kurdish fighters, she started receiving threats from other camp residents because she had good relations with the Kurdish guards.
Future of the camps in limbo
The government push into northeast Syria led to chaos in some of the more than a dozen detention centers where nearly 9,000 members of Daesh have been held for years.
Syrian government forces are now in control of Al-Aqtan prison near Raqqa as well as the Shaddadeh prison near the border with Iraq, where more than 120 detainees managed to flee amid the chaos before most of them were captured again.
Part of an initial ceasefire agreement between Damascus and the SDF included the Kurdish-led group handing over management of the camps and detention centers to the Syrian government.
Buthaina, the Tunisian citizen, said her husband and her son are held in a prison. She said her husband worked in cleaning and did not fight, while her son fought with the extremists.
She has been in Roj for nine years and saw her other children grow up without proper education or a childhood like other children.
“All we want is freedom. Find a solution for us,” Buthaina said.
She said the Tunisian government never checked on them, but now she hopes that “if Al-Golani takes us there will be a solution.”
She said those accused of crimes should stand trial and others should be set free.
“I am not a terrorist. The mistake I made is that I left my country and came here,” she said. “We were punished for nine years that were more like 90 years.”
