Tunisia: Radicals Target Schools

(Human Rights Watch/IFEX)  -  Tunis, December 9, 2011  -  The Tunisian authorities should protect individual and academic freedoms from acts of violence and other threats by religiously motivated groups acting on university campuses, Human Rights Watch said today. Both the university authorities and the state security forces will need to cooperate to protect the rights to security and education of students and faculty.

One university suspended classes on December 6, 2011, because of security concerns. Demonstrators have caused disruptions on the campuses of at least four universities since October, demanding imposition of their own interpretation of Islam in the curriculum and in campus life and dress. They have interrupted classes, prevented students from taking exams, confined deans in their offices, and intimidated women professors.

"Tunisian authorities should of course protect the right to protest peacefully but should show zero tolerance when groups of protesters disrupt campus learning with threats of violence," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The timing and location of some of these protests suggest that they were planned to cause maximum disruption by interfering with exams, thus depriving thousands of students of their rights."

The Higher Education Ministry, the supervisory authority for universities in Tunisia, has yet to take decisive action to deter disruptions of academic life and acts of aggression and intimidation by fundamentalist groups on campus.

Security forces have made no arrests in these incidents, although those who attacked or threatened the staff of public universities appear to have violated the law. Under article 116 of the penal code, it is a criminal offense for "anyone who uses or threatens to use violence on civil servants in order to force them to perform, or to prevent them from performing, their official duties."

The most sustained protests have occurred at the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Humanities of Manouba, a city near Tunis, the capital. Other incidents took place at the business school of the University of Manouba, the School of Arts and Humanities of Sousse, the Higher Institute of Arts and Crafts in Kairouan, and the Higher Institute of Theology of Tunis.

The principles of university autonomy and non-intervention on campus should not be used by the government as an excuse to relinquish its obligation to ensure security of students and professors, to deter outsiders from disrupting academic activities, and to see to it that demonstrations do not disproportionately impair the rights of others, Human Rights Watch said.

The Tunisian government should ensure swift intervention of security forces whenever requested by the faculty to prevent third parties from seriously disrupting academic life, Human Rights Watch said. Authorities should also put in place monitoring systems so that physical attacks and threats on schools, teachers, and students are tracked, to identify those responsible and to hold them accountable in conformity with the Tunisian penal code.

"Under President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisian campuses were stifled by enforced political uniformity," Whitson said. "Tunisian students and professors didn't help to oust Ben Ali only to see one form of repression on campus replaced by another."

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The People's Revolt in Tunisia

Tunisia's revolt, which was triggered by the martyr Bouazezi's self-immolation and helped overthrow the “former” president, Zein Alabideen Bin Ali, carries many messages and lessons to be read and analyzed. It is an indicator of the direction of the political and humanitarian compass not only in Tunisia and the Arab region, but also across the globe – for what has taken in place in Tunisia is a global event par excellence.

The very first of such messages alludes to the jubilation with which Arab nations have welcomed the news; laymen in the Arab world received the news about Bin Ali’s departure with a note of optimism, believing that the event will spark change in most of the Arab states ruled by totalitarian, corrupt regimes. Although Bin Ali is not the first Arab president to be overthrown in recent times – with Saddam Hussein's overthrow in Iraq perhaps the most notorious – the fact that Bin Ali has been brought down by his own people, without foreign intervention, and that this was a popular revolt rather than military coup, has been greeted with general satisfaction, unlike the controversy of the Iraq invasion.

Many political observers and analysts feel the wave of protest will not be restricted to Tunisia; they refer in this respect to demonstrations in Algeria and Jordan recently – though demonstrations in Jordan have been peaceful and have not called for the overthrow of the regime. Instead, the demand is for improved economic conditions and reform of the government’s criticised economic policy, while re-iterating faith in the monarchy as the defining identity of the state and guarantor of stability.

Tunisia's message will definitely find its way to the mailboxes of Arab rulers. There is a need to launch genuine political, economic and social reform processes more significant than the mere superficialities that the pan-Arab regimes have long practiced by hiding behind a “formal or pseudo-democracy”, and ultra-nationalist or religious ideologies.

Tunisia has also highlighted the double-standards adopted by most democratic states, particularly the Europeans and the United States. Having been involved in occupying Iraq under the pretext that they wanted to help the Iraqi people against the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, the US and many European nations refrained from advancing democracy and maintained a foggy attitude vis-à-vis what has been taking place in Tunisia. They have failed to justify their support for Bin Ali’s regime – which is but one example that those democratic states are supporting non-democratic regimes in order to preserve their own vested interests.

By contrast, the Tunisian uprising has proved that the people remain the side that has the final say, and that any regime anywhere in the globe is bound to fall as long as it continues to distance itself from its people regardless of the size of support it receives from key powerful countries. History has already proved that powerful allies will not be able to protect such regimes if the people can no longer abjure injustice and oppression.

The third message has to do with Tunisia itself. The Tunisian people who offered the lives and blood of their sons for freedom should not fall into the trap that opportunists and power-addicts are trying to set up for them. The Tunisian people should know that these opportunists who benefited from Ben Ali’s regime will not easily give up their interests and gains. A case in point here is the fact that the Tunisian constitution was overlooked when the prime minister assumed power instead of allowing the house speaker to fill in the gap as per that constitution. The Tunisian people should not be tricked by such a move, for the solution definitely does not lie in the hands of those who helped Bin Ali oppress his people. The solution to the current political crisis can be achieved through the formation of a national salvation government that represents all political factions in Tunisia. The first task such a government should attend to will be to hold legislative and presidential elections as soon as possible, provided that such elections are run by an independent commission under local and international observation.



Mohammed Hussainy is director of the Identity Center in Amman, Jordan and writes for the Arabic language Al Ghad newspaper. This article first appeared on openDemocracy.net and has been republished under a Creative Commons licence. Copyright © Mohammed Hussainy. Published by MercatorNet.com.