Violence in Tunisia ten years after the revolution: what's going on?

A hundred or so people marched in Tunis, defying a ban on assemblies decreed in the face of the deteriorating epidemiological situation in recent weeks. Despite the ban imposed from 14 to 17 January, the streets of several Tunisian cities have been filled every night since Friday with young people from different neighbourhoods.

In Tunis, demonstrators, including many students, chanted the slogans of the 2011 revolution, "work, freedom, national dignity", on the country's main artery, Bourguiba Avenue, to protest against the government and demand the high cost of living, rising poverty and random arrests in the country.

Many Tunisians are increasingly fed up with the government's handling of poor public services and a political class that has repeatedly demonstrated its inability to govern coherently.

Tunisia is in the midst of a deep economic crisis, further aggravated by the pandemic. GDP fell by 9 per cent last year, prices have soared and a third of young people are unemployed. In addition, the tourism sector has been dealt a devastating blow by the pandemic. In the first half of 2020, the unemployment rate rose from 15% to 18%, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INS).

Young people have gathered in the streets to make their anger against the government heard, causing riots, throwing stones, burning tyres, looting shops, and clashing with the police, deployed in dozens of localities. Police have not hesitated to intervene each time, retaliating with tear gas and arresting hundreds of people.

Several human rights organisations accused the security forces of excessive use of force and announced the creation of a legal support committee for the detainees as well as an online platform to collect testimonies of police abuses.

Unrest broke out in several regions on Friday, the day after the tenth anniversary of the fall of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted from power by mobs on 14 January 2011. January is regularly marked by social mobilisations in Tunisia, commemorating the start of the Arab Spring.

After three nights of clashes between police and young protesters in marginalised areas across the country, the Interior Ministry announced on Monday morning more than 600 arrests, according to ministerial spokesman Khaled Hayouni.   

Following the fifth night of unrest between youth groups and police amid a political crisis and tightening restrictions to curb the coronavirus pandemic, Tunisian security forces arrested a total of 432 people in different parts of the country on Tuesday.

A few hours earlier, a handful of people had gathered in front of the Tunis court to demand the release of the young people arrested in recent days, many of whom are minors.

In Ettadamen, the most populated suburb of the capital and one of the most disadvantaged, youths erected barricades and threw stones, while police and National Guard officers responded with tear gas to disperse the crowd, which angered many neighbours who warned of gas flooding their homes.

Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi gave a televised address to the nation in an attempt to calm the protests. "I understand the protesters and their desire to express themselves, but there is no justification for not respecting the night curfew, for looting and for the degradation of public and private property," he said.

In a parliamentary session earlier in the day, Defence Minister Brahim Bartagi revealed the arrest of extremist elements infiltrating the demonstrators in possession of bladed weapons and Molotov cocktails.

On 26 January the Tunisian parliament will hold a vote of confidence in the reshuffle of Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi's government, proposed barely five months after its formation and affecting eleven of its twenty-five portfolios.

Under pressure from his allies in parliament, the Islamist Ennahda and the liberal Tunisian Heart, the head of government introduced eleven new faces, all of them men and most of them close collaborators. Although the constitution does not oblige him to seek support in the chamber, the leader decided to confirm his legitimacy in the midst of a political crisis between the country's three presidencies.

On social media, some Tunisians attribute the violence to the inability of the political class to improve the situation, while others accused several political parties of using the unrest to "create chaos" and instrumentalise the population.

Several Tunisian politicians accused the Ennahda movement of inciting the clashes, Ennahda politician Abdelkrim al-Harouni said in an interview on Al-Zaytuna channel on Wednesday that the movement sent out a call to its youth to support the security forces against "protesters and saboteurs", adding: "When someone attacks the state's public and private property, the people of Ennahda will protect these properties".

The younger people are once again the protagonists of these revolts, however, in the absence of a clear agenda, political leadership or the backing of the main parties, it is unclear whether the demonstrations will gain momentum or die out, as many previous protests have done since 2011.