The disturbances began on December 17 after the suicide of a street vendor selling fruits and vegetables without a license. When police seized his wares, he set himself alight in protest. Mohammad Bouazizi, 26, a breadwinner, became the symbol of an unprecedented revolt against parlous social conditions spread to other regions, where suicidal acts, strikes and demonstrations multiplied. Another young man, Allaa Hidouri, 23, unemployed despite having a university diploma, electrocuted himself in this same region of Sidi Bouziz, according to an eyewitness, bringing to five the number of suicides since mid-December, which ignited the fire of confrontation.
Acts of violence and destruction
This last week, according to international news agencies, the toll of trouble rose to some 50 dead. For his part, the Interior Minister disclosed that four policemen had been killed and another eight wounded in Kasserine. The preceding official toll spoke on Sunday of 14 deaths at Kasserine and Thala. For the Tunisian government, Kasserine had been "the scene of acts of violence and destruction perpetrated by groups who attacked two police stations with Molotov cocktails, clubs and iron bars. After warnings and firing shots in the air, the police used weapons in an act of legitimate self-defense when the assailants stepped up the attacks, throwing PNEUMATICS on fire to force their way into police premises, whose equipment was burned", the Interior Ministry indicated.
"This incident caused the deaths of four assailants and no fewer than eight more or less gravely wounded among the forces of order, some of whom suffered burns", according to the official communiqué.
Concerning the incidents at Thala, Kasserine and Regueb in the Sidi Bouzid region, the government admitted that "this social movement is legitimate and the claims of citizens to have jobs all have their place,' noting that up to a point the incidents had been isolated, exploited by dissidents. The government nevertheless denounced the media, accusing them of "exaggerating or distorting the facts".
A promise to create 300,000 jobs
In an address to the nation at the beginning of the week, President Zein al-Abidin Ben Ali committed himself to creating more jobs between now and 2012 to eliminate unemployment, the origin of this unprecedented crisis in Tunisia. "We have decided to increase the capacities for employment and the creation of sources of income (...) in all sectors", the president said, announcing 300,000 jobs, in addition to the 50,000 others promised by employers' organizations for the regions. "This effort will make it possible to reduce unemployment by 2012. I make a commitment that the time of unemployment of holders of higher degrees will have ended within two years", he promised. This will make it possible to hire the largest number of jobless, in addition to graduates with higher degrees and among the unemployed of all categories", he assured the nation. At the same time President Ben Ali decried the "unpardonable acts of terrorism perpetrated by hooded thugs" in the Center-West of the country, the theater of the disturbances on January 8 and 9 that caused the deaths of 14 people, according to the government.
A national conference on employment
In this address to the nation, the president said he would convene a national conference on joblessness in February and ordered the exemption from taxes for "any new project aimed at generating jobs in the regions". He also attributed the troubles to "hostile elements in the pay of the foreigner" and "certain parties that want to harm the country's interests or manipulate our young people", he said, urging Tunisians to "protect their offspring against miscreants. These groups, which incite to violence and take to the streets shouting empty slogans of despair and inventing wholly fallacious and erroneous reports, have dishonestly exploited an incident that we all regret", he said in reference to the suicidal vendor in Sidi Bouzid. Equally, President Ben Ali stigmatized "hostile elements in the pay of the foreigner, who have sold their souls to extremism and terrorism, manipulated from outside the country by parties which have no love for a country determined to persevere and to work", he declared, expressing his "regrets for those who have died and for the damage" and his "compassion for the families in mourning".
At the moment these words are being written, there are clashes in the capital itself. As the situation evolves, Europe and the United States have expressed disquiet. Ban Ki-Moon, secretary-general of the United Nations, has voiced concern at the rising violence, while France, which "unconditionally" supports an "advanced status" for Tunisia by the European Union, has deplored the bloodshed.
400,000 graduates in search of work
In Tunisia, these disturbances have their source in the malaise of jobless graduates, but also in a sharp rise in food prices, a phenomenon seen elsewhere. The unemployment that burdens Tunisia today can be explained by the fact that when President Ben Ali took office in 1987, graduates numbered 30,000, while today they are 400,000. Thanks to its enlightened president, Tunisia has become "a land of educated people", for whom employment must be found. Already in his address on November 7, the national day, President Ben Ali had announced that one of his priority goals was the creation of jobs for this large number of university graduates. Tunisia's privileged position is also explained by its social advances. It is one of the rare Muslim countries -- if it is not the only one apart from Turkey -- which has adopted secularism and equality in the sphere of personal status. Women's rights do not exist anywhere else in the Muslim world -- or perhaps even in the Western world -- for the reason that a Tunisian man has no right to marry more than one spouse, and that in the event of conflict with his wife, the Tunisian state subsidized the needs of the family (school, university, lodging, clothing), while in all other civilized countries the authorities drag their feet for months, even years, before granting this support to meet the most elementary human right. Incontestable social advances which must be widened in a society accustomed to forms of peaceable expression, far from the multiform agitation of the street.
© Monday Morning 2011
