adminOne man died and around 100 people were injured, including 65 policemen, as a result of a three-day wave of riots which appears to have been triggered by an art exhibition that included works deemed offensive to Islam.
The authorities in the North African country arrested more than 160 people and slapped a curfew on several regions, including the Greater Tunis area. No incidents were reported yesterday.
Ultra-conservative Salafists, who advocate practising Islam as it was by Prophet Mohammed, were blamed for destroying art work deemed “blasphemous” at an exhibition in northern Tunis on Sunday.
The incident sparked clashes across the country on Monday and yesterday that saw police stations and political party offices torched in the worst unrest since the January 2011 revolution that marked the birth of the Arab Spring.
A 22-year-old man who sustained a bullet wound to the head during riots in the eastern city of Sousse on Tuesday died in hospital, an official said yesterday.
A joint statement by the leaders of Tunisia’s government, constituent assembly and presidency condemned “extremist groups who threaten freedoms,” in a thinly veiled reference to the Salafists.
The government is led by the moderate Islamist Ennahda (Renaissance) party while the presidency and post of parliament speaker are held by the two parties that came closest in October’s first post-revolution polls.
The trio also pointed a finger at former members of the Ben Ali regime, who have been accused of instrumentalising Salafist groups to stoke tensions between Islamists and secularists and destabilise the country.
The joint statement cited “the ghosts of the fallen regime trying to sabotage the transition process” at a time when Tunisia is fashioning post-revolution institutions and drafting a new constitution.
A military court yesterday sentenced the ousted strongman, who lives in exile in Saudi Arabia with his wife, to 20 years imprisonment over the death of four protestors in January last year.
Ben Ali, who ruled Tunisia with an iron fist for 23 years, had already been sentenced to 66 years in jail on various charges, and faces the death penalty over another case of police killings.
Tunisia’s uprising and ensuing democratic advances have been internationally hailed but few of the economic woes that drew people into the streets in the first place have been resolved, the security situation is fragile and society increasingly polarised over the role of religion.
The latest unrest came after an audio message in which Al-Qaeda supremo Ayman al-Zawahiri called on Tunisians to rise up and demand the implementation of Islamic law hit the Internet on Sunday.
But Ennahda’s influential leader, Rached Ghannouchi, dismissed suggestions that the sudden nationwide Salafist mobilisation was a direct consequence.
“Ayman al-Zawahiri has no influence in Tunisia. This man is a disaster for Islam and for Moslems,” he told reporters. — AFP.
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