Tunisia.. A detained dissident on hunger strike and a demonstration by the Salvation Front supporters

Yesterday, Saturday, the Tunisian Ennahda Movement party announced that one of its leaders had entered a hunger strike to protest his arrest since last April, while the opposition National Salvation Front renewed its demand for the “immediate release of a number of political detainees.”

In a statement, Al-Nahda held the investigating judge and the authorities responsible for the deterioration of the health condition of the leader of the movement, Ahmed Al-Mashreqi.

Ennahda condemned what it called “practices that do not respect the human self or the country’s laws and customs,” and considered that forcing the detainees to engage in hunger strikes as a last resort to defend themselves is a dangerous policy and a great risk to the lives of Tunisians who have no fault other than their disagreement with the ruling authority.

On April 18, the investigative judge of the Court of First Instance in Tunis issued a prison warrant against both the head of the Ennahda movement, Rashid Ghannouchi, and the director of his office, Ahmed al-Mashreqi.

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The “Salvation” Front… A pause and demands

In a related context, the “Salvation Front” renewed its demand, yesterday, Saturday, for the authorities to “immediately release a number of political detainees” in what is known as the case of conspiracy against state security.

This came during a stand carried out by the Front’s supporters on Habib Bourguiba Street in the capital, Tunis, during which they raised slogans such as “Freedoms, freedoms, not the fulfillment of instructions, holding fast to the release of detainees,” without immediate comment from the authorities regarding these demands.

In the same context, Elias, the son of the former Secretary-General of the Democratic Current Party, Ghazi Chawashy, who was arrested in connection with the so-called conspiracy against the state’s order, said that he had been summoned to appear before a security squad specialized in combating cybercrimes, without further clarification regarding the background of this summons.

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“The father is in prison and the son is in the diaspora, and I am being prosecuted for displacing and dispersing the family,” al-Shawashy Jr. said in a post on Facebook, adding that the resistance continues against the police state and against the policy of Qais Saeed and Minister of Justice Laila Jaffal, as he described in the post.

Since last February 11, Tunisia has witnessed a campaign of arrests that included politicians, media figures, activists, judges and businessmen, and President Said accused some of those arrested of “conspiring against state security and being behind the crises of goods distribution and high prices.”

Saeed has repeatedly stressed the independence of the judicial authorities, but the opposition accuses him of using the judiciary to prosecute those who reject exceptional measures that began to be imposed on July 25, 2021.