15-01-2011, 09:53 PM
As hundreds of soldiers and tanks locked down a deserted central Tunis today, the debris on the city's main avenue told the story of a brutal repression which some feared had not come to an end.
Amid the teargas cartridges, smashed-up shops and scorched pavements lay a sea of strewn shoes: one left flip-flop, a pair of torn baseball boots, a woman's fluffy slipper, a shiny black brogue. They had been left by people fleeing as police charged them, or dragged and beat them, during the peaceful protests that toppled the region's most repressive despot.
Tunisia, the small Maghreb country famed for low-cost package holidays and miraculous economic progress, made history this weekend when a spontaneous people's uprising toppled Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the president who had ruled for 23 years and was today in exile in Saudi Arabia. Tunisia's population of 10 million people, known for their high levels of education and civic pride, became the first people in the Arab world to take to the streets and oust a leader.
But while the second interim president in 24 hours Fouad Mebazaa, a figure from the dictator's regime moved to form a hurried temporary coalition government, bringing in the opposition politicians who had been repressed, jailed and weakened under Ben Ali's rule, a mood of trepidation, confusion and fear for safety tempered the joy of the "Jasmine revolution".
In the capital, Tunis, and other areas of the country, residents reported knife-wielding and balaclava-clad gangs attacking apartments and homes. Organised groups were said to be attacking shops and factories. Many had piled into stolen hire cars and careered around the city and suburbs, stopping only to smash and burn.
One young lawyer who hastily left his office in the centre of Tunis for the quieter southern suburbs said: "There's complete confusion and everyone is trying to understand who is behind this, whether it's Ben Ali's militia clinging on. Yes, there has been isolated looting of shops. But the gangs seem organised; they are inciting thieves.
"They seem to be making trouble to convince public opinion that things were better under the dictatorship. Joy has turned to extreme caution and fear for people's safety."
Throughout the day, sporadic gunfire was heard in Tunis, while the main train station was torched and smoke billowed over a supermarket as it was burned and emptied. Groups of Tunisia's notoriously brutal plain-clothes police, described as a kind of "north African Stasi", barricaded the Avenue Bourguiba near the Interior Ministry and stood guard on corners swinging clubs and batons. More than 40 people died in a fire at a prison in Monastir. One Tunisian prison director let 1,000 inmates escape after protests.
As military helicopters hovered over Tunis and soldiers manned checkpoints on roads out of the city, intellectuals wondered how great a role the army was playing behind the scenes and whether there was a standoff between them and the police.
"We don't know if the army are in total control; we don't understand if there are altercations between security forces or if there could be an insurrection," said Sana Ben Achour at the offices of the democratic women's movement.
The leadership changes came at dizzying speed. Tunisia had witnessed four weeks of street protests, sparked by the plight of an unemployed rural graduate who set himself alight after his vegetable cart was confiscated by police. But the revolt against unemployment, police repression and the corruption of the autocratic, mafia-style ruling class was a revolution without a leader.
When Ben Ali, dubbed a "Ceausescu of the sands", hastily and unexpectedly fled the country in his jet on Friday night, it left behind a confused vacuum. Ben Ali's long-time ally in the regime, prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, stepped in briefly, creating a sense of confusion and leaving open the possibility that Ben Ali could return.
But yesterday the constitutional council declared the president's departure was permanent and gave Mebazaa 60 days to organise new elections.
It was unclear who might emerge as the main candidates in a post-Ben Ali Tunisia: the autocratic leader has utterly dominated politics for decades, placing his men in positions of power and sending opponents to jail or into exile.
In central Tunis, people began ripping down the ubiquitous portraits of Ben Ali that have adorned public buildings and roundabouts for years. "I called him Tarzan," said a printer watching two men pull down an awning of the Tunisian despot. As the first picture came down, another one was revealed behind it and another after that. But the older Ben Ali got, the younger he looked in each portrait, revealing the vanity of a man who liked to be filmed in soft focus and have his wrinkles airbrushed.
Rage against the ruling dynasty, particularly the family of Ben Ali's loathed wife, Leila Trabelsi, dubbed "Madame La Présidente" or the "Queen of Carthage", continued today as the family's numerous villas and properties were ransacked and burned. The former hairdresser and her extended family had a mafia-style grip on business, construction and foreign investment, living a lifestyle so lavish they would fly in food from other continents for parties. It emerged that she had fled the country in fitting style on board her "shopping plane".
Ben Ali himself had landed in Jeddah, and was sheltering with the Saudi royal family, much like another African dictator on the run before him, Idi Amin.
One resident of La Marsa, the bourgeois northern suburb of Tunis, said people had raided the family's villas and mansions, taking out what remained of their extensive car collection and going joy-riding. "That family drove Porsches while we couldn't afford to eat," said an elderly man.
On the same day as President Nicolas Sarkozy made clear the former colonial power's "resolute support" for the popular uprising, Paris also said it would block suspicious movements of the family's assets in France. A government spokesman told French radio that members of Ben Ali's family were not welcome to stay in the country.
For ordinary Tunisians, there was hope amid the uncertainty and apprehension. "We're a sentimental people," one teacher had said at the protests, explaining how dearly the educated lower middle classes prized the constitution and Tunisia's modernity. "More than 70 people have died, killed by the security forces. It's time for this to stop."
In a country blanketed with secret police and their informants, people had long been afraid to talk politics or even make a joke about its corrupt despotic regime. But now the authorities in the country's neighbours Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan are, with their own levels of authoritarianism, unemployment and repressive police, watching out for a contagion effect on their streets. As the fleeing Ben Ali's plane circled before Tunisians knew where he would land and take shelter, a new joke did the rounds: "The jet is about to make a stop at Sharm el-Sheikh not to land but to pick up passengers."
Neji Brouri, 45, a key trade unionist in the journalists' union, is a writer who had been tracked, arrested and harassed by the regime for not toeing the line in the state-muzzled and totally censored press. His wife and family had endured decades of violence and pressure from the secret police. He said: "There is a mood of relief. But now we need a climate of freedom, human rights, civic freedoms to emerge. Gangs of militia are still trying to panic the country. The press of course is still in the hands of power. This isn't finished yet. We all have mixed feelings, there's joy but first and foremost people need to feel safe. People have been killed, tortured, followed, harassed, had their lives destroyed. Now there's a feeling the sacrifice was worth it. I woke up this morning thinking, was this all a dream? Now we have to prove it wasn't."
A BRIEF HISTORY
1956 Tunisia gains independence from France with Habib Bourguiba as prime minister. A year later the monarchy is abolished, Tunisia becomes a republic and Bourguiba its president.
1987 Prime Minister Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has Bourguiba declared mentally unfit to rule and takes control, winning further presidential elections in 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2004.
2009 Ben Ali wins a fifth term. A prominent journalist critical of the president, Taoufik Ben Brik, is jailed.
17 December 2010 Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old graduate, sets fire to himself after officials prevent him from selling vegetables, prompting nationwide rioting over unemployment and political restrictions.
14 January 2011 Ben Ali concedes power, fleeing to Saudi Arabia.
15 January Fouad Mebazaa is sworn in as Tunisia's new president; he orders creation of unity government.
Amid the teargas cartridges, smashed-up shops and scorched pavements lay a sea of strewn shoes: one left flip-flop, a pair of torn baseball boots, a woman's fluffy slipper, a shiny black brogue. They had been left by people fleeing as police charged them, or dragged and beat them, during the peaceful protests that toppled the region's most repressive despot.
Tunisia, the small Maghreb country famed for low-cost package holidays and miraculous economic progress, made history this weekend when a spontaneous people's uprising toppled Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the president who had ruled for 23 years and was today in exile in Saudi Arabia. Tunisia's population of 10 million people, known for their high levels of education and civic pride, became the first people in the Arab world to take to the streets and oust a leader.
But while the second interim president in 24 hours Fouad Mebazaa, a figure from the dictator's regime moved to form a hurried temporary coalition government, bringing in the opposition politicians who had been repressed, jailed and weakened under Ben Ali's rule, a mood of trepidation, confusion and fear for safety tempered the joy of the "Jasmine revolution".
In the capital, Tunis, and other areas of the country, residents reported knife-wielding and balaclava-clad gangs attacking apartments and homes. Organised groups were said to be attacking shops and factories. Many had piled into stolen hire cars and careered around the city and suburbs, stopping only to smash and burn.
One young lawyer who hastily left his office in the centre of Tunis for the quieter southern suburbs said: "There's complete confusion and everyone is trying to understand who is behind this, whether it's Ben Ali's militia clinging on. Yes, there has been isolated looting of shops. But the gangs seem organised; they are inciting thieves.
"They seem to be making trouble to convince public opinion that things were better under the dictatorship. Joy has turned to extreme caution and fear for people's safety."
Throughout the day, sporadic gunfire was heard in Tunis, while the main train station was torched and smoke billowed over a supermarket as it was burned and emptied. Groups of Tunisia's notoriously brutal plain-clothes police, described as a kind of "north African Stasi", barricaded the Avenue Bourguiba near the Interior Ministry and stood guard on corners swinging clubs and batons. More than 40 people died in a fire at a prison in Monastir. One Tunisian prison director let 1,000 inmates escape after protests.
As military helicopters hovered over Tunis and soldiers manned checkpoints on roads out of the city, intellectuals wondered how great a role the army was playing behind the scenes and whether there was a standoff between them and the police.
"We don't know if the army are in total control; we don't understand if there are altercations between security forces or if there could be an insurrection," said Sana Ben Achour at the offices of the democratic women's movement.
The leadership changes came at dizzying speed. Tunisia had witnessed four weeks of street protests, sparked by the plight of an unemployed rural graduate who set himself alight after his vegetable cart was confiscated by police. But the revolt against unemployment, police repression and the corruption of the autocratic, mafia-style ruling class was a revolution without a leader.
When Ben Ali, dubbed a "Ceausescu of the sands", hastily and unexpectedly fled the country in his jet on Friday night, it left behind a confused vacuum. Ben Ali's long-time ally in the regime, prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, stepped in briefly, creating a sense of confusion and leaving open the possibility that Ben Ali could return.
But yesterday the constitutional council declared the president's departure was permanent and gave Mebazaa 60 days to organise new elections.
It was unclear who might emerge as the main candidates in a post-Ben Ali Tunisia: the autocratic leader has utterly dominated politics for decades, placing his men in positions of power and sending opponents to jail or into exile.
In central Tunis, people began ripping down the ubiquitous portraits of Ben Ali that have adorned public buildings and roundabouts for years. "I called him Tarzan," said a printer watching two men pull down an awning of the Tunisian despot. As the first picture came down, another one was revealed behind it and another after that. But the older Ben Ali got, the younger he looked in each portrait, revealing the vanity of a man who liked to be filmed in soft focus and have his wrinkles airbrushed.
Rage against the ruling dynasty, particularly the family of Ben Ali's loathed wife, Leila Trabelsi, dubbed "Madame La Présidente" or the "Queen of Carthage", continued today as the family's numerous villas and properties were ransacked and burned. The former hairdresser and her extended family had a mafia-style grip on business, construction and foreign investment, living a lifestyle so lavish they would fly in food from other continents for parties. It emerged that she had fled the country in fitting style on board her "shopping plane".
Ben Ali himself had landed in Jeddah, and was sheltering with the Saudi royal family, much like another African dictator on the run before him, Idi Amin.
One resident of La Marsa, the bourgeois northern suburb of Tunis, said people had raided the family's villas and mansions, taking out what remained of their extensive car collection and going joy-riding. "That family drove Porsches while we couldn't afford to eat," said an elderly man.
On the same day as President Nicolas Sarkozy made clear the former colonial power's "resolute support" for the popular uprising, Paris also said it would block suspicious movements of the family's assets in France. A government spokesman told French radio that members of Ben Ali's family were not welcome to stay in the country.
For ordinary Tunisians, there was hope amid the uncertainty and apprehension. "We're a sentimental people," one teacher had said at the protests, explaining how dearly the educated lower middle classes prized the constitution and Tunisia's modernity. "More than 70 people have died, killed by the security forces. It's time for this to stop."
In a country blanketed with secret police and their informants, people had long been afraid to talk politics or even make a joke about its corrupt despotic regime. But now the authorities in the country's neighbours Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan are, with their own levels of authoritarianism, unemployment and repressive police, watching out for a contagion effect on their streets. As the fleeing Ben Ali's plane circled before Tunisians knew where he would land and take shelter, a new joke did the rounds: "The jet is about to make a stop at Sharm el-Sheikh not to land but to pick up passengers."
Neji Brouri, 45, a key trade unionist in the journalists' union, is a writer who had been tracked, arrested and harassed by the regime for not toeing the line in the state-muzzled and totally censored press. His wife and family had endured decades of violence and pressure from the secret police. He said: "There is a mood of relief. But now we need a climate of freedom, human rights, civic freedoms to emerge. Gangs of militia are still trying to panic the country. The press of course is still in the hands of power. This isn't finished yet. We all have mixed feelings, there's joy but first and foremost people need to feel safe. People have been killed, tortured, followed, harassed, had their lives destroyed. Now there's a feeling the sacrifice was worth it. I woke up this morning thinking, was this all a dream? Now we have to prove it wasn't."
A BRIEF HISTORY
1956 Tunisia gains independence from France with Habib Bourguiba as prime minister. A year later the monarchy is abolished, Tunisia becomes a republic and Bourguiba its president.
1987 Prime Minister Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has Bourguiba declared mentally unfit to rule and takes control, winning further presidential elections in 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2004.
2009 Ben Ali wins a fifth term. A prominent journalist critical of the president, Taoufik Ben Brik, is jailed.
17 December 2010 Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old graduate, sets fire to himself after officials prevent him from selling vegetables, prompting nationwide rioting over unemployment and political restrictions.
14 January 2011 Ben Ali concedes power, fleeing to Saudi Arabia.
15 January Fouad Mebazaa is sworn in as Tunisia's new president; he orders creation of unity government.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass