Everybody was waiting for the revolution in Tunisia. Tunisian people were really afraid about the future. But it happened really very, very fast. The same events didn´t have the same effects because we had the same problems two years before in Tunisia in the city of it´s near Gafsa in the south of Tunisia. [In 2008, a series of miners’ strikes and demonstrations erupted in the city and region of Gafsa, about 350 kilometers southwest of Tunis. The government responded with force. The protests were seen as a harbinger of the Tunisian Revolution that began in 2010.]
We had the same problems that we had with Mohamed Bouazizi and with the beginning of the revolution. [Mohamed Bouazizi was a Tunisian fruit vendor from the city of Sidi Bouzid, who set himself on fire in protest of the government’s harassment and unlawful confiscation of his products] But I think the difference came from the media. Because I have a friend who was really near Bouazizi. The 17 of December [2010]. And he immediately take his phone, and he called the medias in Al Jazeera and another media in France. And after that, they had the sequences, the movies of what happened in Sidi Bouzid [a city in central Tunisia, home to Mohamed Bouazizi and where the Tunisian Revolution began]. And they put it immediately in Facebook.
So the how do you say? The announcement of what happens in Sidi Bouzid in the center of Tunisia, it had immediately very, very big circulation. And everybody was exchanging the movies and were talking about it. And the same thing in the medias in the world. The world, okay? The only place that they weren´t talking about it was in Tunisia. The official medias, you know? And the radios, et cetera. So immediately, it passed from a town to another, from a town to another. And after that, in Tunis here the artists talk about it and they try to have a first manifestation. [demonstration]
Well, a first was protest here in the Habib Bourguiba Avenue. And that first protest was immediately stopped by political police in Tunisia. And after that all Tunisia was in revolution, really. So the police had a lot of difficulties to stop that. And the reason that it was so fast, you know? Because of the news. The news was very, very fast. And the regime can´t stop the news about what happened in Tunisia, no? And the regime was very old.
The regime was very bad. So everybody was against that regime. In Tunisia, there is not a caste who would defend [Former Tunisian President Zine el Abidine] Ben Ali. Not a caste. No one see his party too. His party was against him in the last, you know? In the last days. It was the first revolution in the Arabic world. So they were not prepared for that. That’s what explains the difficulties of the other revolution in the other countries, you know? Now you had Tunisia. After that, you had Egypt. After that, they learn how to stop it, you know?
Abdel Aziz Belkhodja is a Tunisian writer, publisher, and democracy advocate. In 2003, he penned a satirical novel called The Return of the Elephant in which he criticized the authoritarian regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Belkhodja’s narrative is set 100 years in the future where Tunisia has become an influential, democratic nation pitted against a tyrannical United States. This fanciful portrayal of the United States worked to spotlight the repressive policies being practiced by Ben Ali’s government.
Beyond his literary criticism of the Tunisian government, Belkhodja challenged the regime more directly via the Internet. In the midst of the country’s 2010-2011 revolution, he appealed to army, police, and government officials to abandon Ben Ali.
After the fall of Ben Ali, Belkhodja helped found the Tunisian Republican Party and served as its leader. The Republican Party joined the Democratic Modernist Pole, a coalition of four political parties and several civic initiatives, which ran in Tunisia’s constituent assembly elections in October 2011. He has since left politics to focus on his writing.
Belkhodja is the author of several novels and histories of Carthage including The Ashes of Carthage, The Stars of Anger, Love Mosaic, The Sign of Tanit, and Hannibal, the True Story.
Tunisia is situated on the Mediterranean coastline. It has a population of fewer than 11 million people and is the smallest nation in North Africa in land area. In 2010 and 2011, it became the first of the Arab countries to revolt against decades of dictatorial rule, launching the Arab Spring and a wave of change across the region. Tunisia has a developing economy, focused largely on agriculture, tourism, and light industry.
Tunisia has been settled since ancient times. In the 10th century B.C., it was part of the Phoenician Empire. The city of Carthage, near the modern capital of Tunis, was established in the 9th century B.C. In 149 B.C., the Roman Empire conquered the Phoenicians. Islam was introduced to what is now Tunisia in the 7th century A.D., and the area formed part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries. In 1881, Tunisia became a protectorate of France. A strong French cultural element continues to this day.
In 1956, Habib Bourguiba led Tunisia to independence from France. His political party, later known as the Constitutional Democratic Rally, went on to dominate Tunisian politics for more than 50 years. Bourguiba’s Tunisia was a largely secular state and was viewed as one of the most progressive in the Arab world on women’s issues. In 1987, Bourguiba was replaced in a “bloodless coup” by his prime minister, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Ben Ali continued many of Bourguiba’s policies, but ruled with an increasingly heavy hand. The Ben Ali regime was repressive and corrupt, with a dismal human rights record. The regime showed little tolerance for dissent, and lashed out at opposition voices in politics, civil society, and the media.
The Tunisian Revolution began in December 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi, a young street vendor, set himself on fire in protest over harassment by a local official. Bouazizi’s act led to mass demonstrations across the country, protesting the lack of human rights, poor economic conditions, and corruption and nepotism in the Ben Ali regime. On January 14, 2011, Ben Ali stepped down and fled the country. On October 23, 2011, Tunisia held its first free elections, forming a Constituent Assembly to draft a new constitution and lead the country to general elections. The role of religion in society is among the most important issues facing the assembly and country.
Under the interim Constituent Assembly, Tunisia has experienced considerable political upheaval, but has begun to consolidate its democracy. There is a major fault line between Islamist and secular political forces. In 2013, several political assassinations resulted in widespread protests and demonstrators calling for the nation’s Islamist-led government to be removed. In January of 2014, after two years of debate, the Constituent Assembly ratified the nation’s new constitution. The constitution is considered progressive for the nation and has many human rights guarantees. With the ratification of the constitution, elections are scheduled for autumn 2014.
Freedom House’s 2013 Freedom in the World report categorized Tunisia as “partly free”. The nation received the following ratings on a scale with one being the most free and seven being the least: 3.5 as an overall freedom rating, a four in civil liberties and a three in political rights. Tunisia’s Internet and press were also categorized as “partly free” in subsequent Freedom House reports.
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