The arrest made by Tunisian security forces has flickered uncertainties that President Kais Saied is resorting to tougher actions against his opponents in the crisis-hit birthplace of the 2011 Arab uprisings.
The most recent arrests, which include high-ranking members of the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party, come a year and a half after Saied overthrew the government, halted the legislative process, and seized extensive power in what his opponents have dubbed as a coup.
Security operatives have arrested a number of Saied’s opponents and have since been placed on trial in military courts, adding to the arrests on Saturday(11, Feb. 2023) of the head of the country’s most popular radio station and a prominent businessman, along with several other public figures, appear to mark an escalation.
“The country is facing a grave crisis,” said political analyst Abdellatif Hannachi, saying the circumstances around the arrests were “very murky”.
“The president has become obsessed with using the security forces,” Hannachi added.
Saied has pushed through significant changes to the precarious democracy that came from Tunisia’s 2011 revolt, creating a toothless parliament and enacting a new constitution in elections that saw a historically low turnout.
While everything is going on, staples like coffee and cooking oil have vanished from the stores in Tunisia due to a devastating economic situation.
Two days after the imprisonment of businessman Kamel Eltaief, former top Ennahdha official Abdelhamid Jelassi, and political activist Khayam Turki, police detained former justice minister Noureddine Bhiri and director of Mosaique FM Noureddine Boutar on Monday night (13 Feb. 2023).
Lawyer and former minister for state property Ghazi Chouachi said authorities were trying to “distract public attention and intimidate the opposition”.
In a post made on Facebook page, he said the arrests were “arbitrary” and that Saied’s rule was one of “permanent absurdity”.
According to a post made by africanews.com, UN rights chief Volker Turk also voiced alarm on Tuesday, 14 February 2023 over “the deepening crackdown against perceived political opponents and civil society in Tunisia, including attacks on the independence of the judiciary”, his spokesman Jeremy Laurence told reporters in Geneva.
The charges against those detained have not been made public, but Saied said Tuesday, 14 February 2023 that some of those arrested were “criminals who were plotting against state security”.
He also accused them of being responsible for consumer product shortages and skyrocketing inflation, which analysts have blamed on the effects of the Ukraine War and the problems of the Tunisian Dinar.
“Organised gangs are plotting with these traitors and mercenaries,” Saied told his trade minister in a video posted on the presidency’s Facebook page.
“Conspiracy against state security” can carry the death penalty.
Ennadha issued a statement saying it “strongly condemns the abductions and systematic abuse of the opposition by Kais Saied’s putschist authorities”.
Mosaique also said that it “strongly condemns the intimidation and arbitrary detention” of its director and what it called the state’s “campaign of fear” against journalists.
Media rights group RSF said on Twitter that Boutar’s detention, “without an arrest warrant or official reason, his interrogation which focused on his editorial choices, is as unacceptable as it is sadly revealing of the crackdown on the press in #Tunisia”.
Those arrested also include a senior official from the UGTT trade union federation, one of the country’s most powerful political forces which has had an increasingly tense relationship with Saied.
Last week, 66 civil society groups, parties and political figures voiced their “full support” for the powerful UGTT trade union, accusing Saied of “targeting” it and trying to “criminalise union work”.
The top UGTT official for highway workers, Anis Kaabi, had been arrested on January 31 after a strike by toll barrier workers, in what the union has described as “a blow to union work and a violation of union rights”.
