AFP, SIDI BOUZID, Tunisia
Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets late on Thursday to disperse a second anti-government protest in the central Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid, the birthplace of last year’s revolution.
About 800 demonstrators furious at police intervention against a protest earlier in the day threw stones at security forces who again replied with rubber bullets and tear gas.
Photo: AFP
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
On Thursday morning, hundreds of demonstrators demanding the resignation of the Islamist-led government had tried to force their way into the provincial government headquarters, before the police fired tear gas and warning shots into the air.
The protesters broke through the entrance to the compound, but when the shots and tear gas were fired, the panicked crowd scattered, a journalist said.
One person wounded by a rubber bullet and four others affected by the tear gas were taken to hospital, an official there said, adding that none of them was seriously hurt.
The demonstrators had been chanting anti-government slogans such as “The people want the regime to fall!” accusing the ruling elite of “hypocrisy” and demanding the right to work.
Several opposition groups took part in the protest, including the Republican Party, the Tunisian Workers Party and al-Watan, as well as political independents.
“The people’s demands for an improvement in their quality of life are becoming more and more insistent, but unfortunately the government is not there to serve the people,” Mohammed Ghadri, a member of the Republican Party, told reporters.
A similar incident took place at the end of June, when protesters angered over their living conditions attacked the same building, hurling rocks and burning tires, with police firing tear gas to disperse them.
The Tunisian Workers’ Party denounced the forceful tactics used by the police on Thursday and reiterated its support for the protesters’ demands, including the dismissal of the provincial governor, the head of the national guard and the public prosecutor.
It also called for the freeing of four protesters it said were arrested.
Sidi Bouzid is where the uprising began that eventually toppled former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and touched off the Arab Spring, when a street vendor immolated himself in December 2010 in protest over his own precarious livelihood.
The town is located in a particularly marginalized region and little has improved since the revolution, according to analysts.
“The residents of Sidi Bouzid live in very difficult conditions, especially with the water and electricity cuts seen recently,” political expert Ahmed Manai said. “These protests were to be expected.”
Poor living conditions, including high youth unemployment, were a driving factor behind the revolution.
Despite signs of an economic recovery this year, many people remain frustrated by the government’s failure to improve their social circumstances, which has led to strikes and confrontations with the police.
The forceful disruption of Thursday’s protests came amid heightened criticism of the government by opposition and civil society groups, which accuse it of increasingly authoritarian and Islamist tendencies.
Several NGOs have accused Ennahda, which leads the ruling tripartite coalition, of seeking to curtail freedom of expression, most recently with a draft law to criminalize offenses against “sacred values” that could carry a two-year jail term.
Another controversy has flared up over a proposed article in the new Tunisian constitution that refers to the “complementarity” of men to women rather than their equality.
Around 200 protesters from different opposition groups gathered outside the National Constituent Assembly in Tunis on Thursday to denounce the proposal. Some of them tried to force open the entrance to the parliament building, but were stopped by the police.
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘KAMPAI’: It is said that people in Japan began brewing rice about 2,000 years ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol Traditional Japanese knowledge and skills used in the production of sake and shochu distilled spirits were approved on Wednesday for addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a committee of the UN cultural body said It is believed people in the archipelago began brewing rice in a simple way about two millennia ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol. By about 1000 AD, the imperial palace had a department to supervise the manufacturing of sake and its use in rituals, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association said. The multi-staged brewing techniques still used today are
RSS