More than 300 died in uprising but there is no list of names and no one is in jail for the attacks
Emma Graham-Harrison in Tunis
Seven years after Tunisia’s revolution, relatives of hundreds of people who died and thousands who were injured in the fight for democracy say they are still waiting for justice and recognition.
No one is currently in jail for attacks carried out during days of protests in early 2011, lawyers for the families say, even though many suspects have been identified and some have been arrested and prosecuted.
Nor has the government published an official list of the more than 300 Tunisians who died, or the injured. There are no national monuments to the sacrifice of these mostly young men and women, and bereaved families and injured survivors say they have had little of the practical or financial help they were promised.
“There is no justice in Tunisia,” said Om Saad, a retired policewoman whose 23-year-old son Majdi was shot dead a block away from the family home by a policeman he had known since childhood. “I know who killed my child and I will not forgive.”
Saad, who lives in Ettadhamen, a deprived Tunis suburb that considers itself the cradle of the revolution, said she had been to more than 49 hearings and tribunals in her son’s case as it was tossed from civilian courts to military tribunals. After the killer was convicted, an initial sentence of 20 years was struck down and he eventually walked free after barely five years in jail.
Saad’s experience was all too common, said Charfeddine Kellil, a lawyer who took on human rights cases against Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the autocrat ousted in the 2011 revolution, and who now finds himself fighting the government that replaced Ben Ali. “This government and the party of the president is against the revolution and does not believe in it,” Kellil said.
He said the last person held in jail over deaths in the revolution was released on the eve of the revolution’s seventh anniversary, adding insult to injury for the bereaved family.
One of that man’s alleged victims was Abdul Qader, younger brother of Ali Mekki, a civil servant who leads an informal organisation of bereaved families and injured survivors. Mekki spent the anniversary leading a protest through the streets of Tunis, reminding the government and his fellow citizens that families whose sacrifice would be honoured and celebrated in other countries felt like outcasts in their own home.
“It should be a symbolic anniversary, the president should be at the palace celebrating and receiving politicians and families of martyrs,” he said, standing beside a campaign banner scrawled with “We will not forgive” in red. “That’s why we have to be in the streets to protect the revolution.”
Among the protesters’ key demands was publication of an official list of the dead. A preliminary record was drawn up in 2011 but never published. Instead it became a political football for Tunisia’s squabbling new leaders, who demanded a new round of investigations, arguing they needed to screen out treasure-hunting fraudsters.
Yamina Zoghlami, an MP, was one of the people tasked with drawing up the final list, as a member of the parliamentary commission for martyrs and those injured in the revolution. The commission completed the first part of its work, filtering through files of alleged martyrs in mid-2016, she said, but the government blocked the list’s publication.
Officially, the government wanted to wait for the much longer list of the injured so it could publish them together, but Zoghlami admitted the delay was also driven by politician concerns. The government had eliminated some of the claims, and officials feared the shorter list would spark protests.
“They are frightened that when they publish it there will be violence in some places, because numbers [of people on the lists] will decrease,” she said. “So of course there will be some pressure on the government.”
The government, which has set and broken many deadlines for the publication of the list, including most recently 14 January, now says the list will come out in March.
Zoghlami said that would pave the way for official recognition of the dead. “When we get a final list we can make monuments, put things in the museums, name streets after them, put them in the textbooks, lots of things. It’s in the law, I fought for this.”
Justice may take longer than monuments, however. Zoghlami said Tunisia’s leaders must maintain a delicate balance between the need to uncover the truth and fears the country could slide back into violence.
The birthplace of the Arab spring is also the only country swept up in the 2011 revolutions that has clung on to democracy. It has watched nervously as others have slid back into civil war or witnessed the rise of new autocrats.
“There is a fear that Tunisia could have the same destiny as the other [Arab spring] countries, Syria and Libya,” Zoghlami said. “That’s why we are hurrying to forget the past and going to a better future.”
The bereaved families and their supporters say Tunisia will never reach that better future if it cannot provide justice for those who fought for it.
“How could I accept Tunisia as my country? I cry for the whole generation,” Om Saad said. “We have given them the country on a plate; they know why the revolution began.”