Student union at heart of protests rocking Tunisia

A left-wing student union has been at the forefront of political protests currently rocking democratic Tunisia, actions that have led to its activists being arrested and held in jail.

Warda Atiq, the secretary-general of L'Union générale des étudiants de Tunisie (UGET), told University World News that 50 members of UGET have been arrested and 32 remain in pre-trial detention.

The first arrest was of Kais Schneiter, UGET’s representative in the southern region of Medenine, in mid-January, as protests sparked by alleged police brutality, economic woes and COVID-19 lockdowns gathered steam.

UGET activist Ghafran Sfar told University World News that police “used psychological pressure” against Schneiter, “threatening to beat him and told him that if he did not stop agitating, they would put him in jail without approval from a judge”.

However, Schneiter was released the next day.

The arrest was followed by that of UGET’s University of Tunis El Manar representative, Montessori bin Salem, who was identified from a social media-posted selfie taken during a night protest on 18 January on social media.

Bin Salem was detained for a week in pre-trial detention during which time he, too, claimed harassment and psychological abuse by police before being released by a presiding judge.

Sfar said: “They are trying to terrify people not to go out, and [to] kill the movement,” recalling harassment by plainclothes police after she and her boyfriend posted a selfie kissing during a protest.

Kissing in public in Tunisia does lead sometimes to police prosecutions for indecency, so this kiss was, in part, a political act.

“The police are everywhere; we know them from where they stand on the street and the ‘beep-beep’ of their radios,” she told University World News.

Lockdown prompts anger

The protests erupted after Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi (an Independent in office since 2020) imposed a four-day national lockdown from 14 January, including a curfew from 4pm, ostensibly to help fight Tunisia’s growing COVID-19 winter outbreak.

But this coincided with the 14 January 10th anniversary of Tunisia’s 2011 revolution that toppled dictator President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, an annual event that has seen riots in past years.

Even though Tunisia has since sustained a democratic system, the economy has been weak (prompting widespread emigration) and there has been political instability – with seven prime ministers serving since 2011, and 20 parties in parliament today, plus independents.

So, rather than preventing unrest, the lockdown prompted anger, being regarded as an attempt to prevent celebrations marking the revolution, with waves of violent night protests and day-time popular marches being staged.

UGET has been part of this civil disobedience. Atiq told University World News: “We were one of the first organisations who called on people to move [against the government].

“We published a statement on 14 January saying that we support the public protests and that we would boycott university examinations. Our members are present in the public demonstrations, we are against the current system and what is happening in our country and against the government.”

According to Atiq, as a result, UGET members have been targeted by the police and government officials determined to tamp down the growing unrest.

Bleak economic outlook

The union has a long history as a left-leaning organisation, willing to foment protest.

UGET was formed in 1952, four years before the country gained independence from former colonial power France.

Past members include Beji Caid Essebsi, Tunisia’s first freely elected post-revolutionary Tunisian president (who served from 2014-2019); Hamma Hammami, the leader of the Tunisia Popular Front, (which has one member in the Tunisian parliament); and Lina Ben Mhenni, who penned the blog A Tunisian Girl that chronicled the course of the Tunisian uprising (she died in 2020).

Former UGET board member for the University of Manouba (2017-2019) and human rights activist Hamza Nasri told University World News: “UGET has always had a political position and a large membership that can be mobilised.”

Noting that, in 2017, UGET had about 40,000 members, he added: “If they join a demonstration, they can make a real difference and so they have real power.”

Sfar stressed that UGET has always had wider political concerns than education: “It isn’t just about students’ issues; we are involved in wider political and social issues that affect different communities,” she said.

COVID-19 has worsened Tunisia’s underlying problems, with the fractious parliament unable to offer effective leadership.

The pandemic has all but killed Tunisia’s tourism industry which previously accounted for 7% of the country’s GDP.

According to Tunisia’s National Institute for Statistics, unemployment had risen to 16.2% of the adult population.

According to a report published on 28 January the outlook for 2021 is bleak, with increased public debt up by 9% year-on-year and tax revenues down by 6.7%, prompting likely government spending cuts and making an already fragile political landscape highly precarious.

Concern over human rights

Nasri said he thought that, now faced with demonstrations too, the police have been reverting to the heavy-handed methodologies of Ben Ali’s regime.

Moreover, in the past six months “with COVID, and the fragile economic and political situation, they seem to have become much more crazy”.

Increased police violence and prosecutions, including the violence against journalists, young people and activists, have been well documented by leading human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, heightening political tensions still further.

So Mechichi’s hard line lockdown in January tipped angry youth into protests, with the night of January 14 seeing poor urban neighbourhoods laced with burned car tyres and demonstrators launching into street battles with the police.

Less violent activists came out in solidarity in day-time marches with weekly marches on Saturdays.

The police response, claimed UGET, has been harsh, fogging streets with tear gas, conducting violent beatings, mass arrests and house raids.

In the western town of Sbeitla, a 20-year-old man was killed when a can of tear gas was fired at his head by police.

The Tunisian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LTDH), supporting families of arrestees and demonstrators harmed during the protests, has been offering pro bono lawyers.

In a press conference on 4 February, LTDH’s legal support coordinator, Nawres Douzi, claimed the organisation has documented 1,680 arrests, of which 300 are minors, and 76 house raids. It is currently defending 777 cases in court.

Inability to deal with concerns

When University World News met senior UGET members on 3 February in Tunis, they were protesting against the previous day’s arrest of the union’s leader at Tunis’ Higher Institute of Human Sciences, Rahma Khachnaoui.

Her lawyer, Hela Ben Salem, claimed police pulled over a taxi carrying Khachnaoui and three other members of the UGET executive bureau, commandeering the taxi and driving it to a police station.

Khachnaoui was then charged with offences including ‘offending a public functionary’ and ‘violence’, while the other three executive members were released.

Khachnaoui previously made public allegations of corruption at the Higher Institute of Human Sciences – that have yet to be proven in judicial proceedings and have been denied.

Ben Salem argued that “the manner of arrest was completely illegal and violent and more like a kidnapping”.

She said Khachanoui has been previously harassed and arrested and has also been accused of wrongdoing by members of the conservative Islamist student union L’Union générale tunisienne des étudiants (UGTE), which supports Tunisia’s political party Ennahda, a Muslim democratic party, which has 52 seats in parliament.

That said, the UGTE, while more moderate in its approach, remains unhappy with the ability of the Tunisian government to realistically deal with the concerns of the country’s students.

Responding to a call for talks from the prime minister and President Kais Saied, the UGTE secretary general Hamza Akaichi said the politicians’ statements ... regarding the participation of young people in the dialogue are positive, but they have already listened to similar speeches previously, “without realistic and field activation”.

He declared “support for the recent peaceful protests and their participation in them, while denouncing violence and sabotage”.

In the meantime, the UGET remains more militant. Ben Salem fears Khachnaoui “could face up to three years of prison” and has already begun a hunger strike.

On 6 February, another large demonstration called by the LTDH took place to protest against mass arrests during the demonstrations.