Tunisia

Tunisia is no longer a revolutionary poster-child

by News Sources 02.07.2013

Rachel Shabi writes: Amid the shock and grief at a terrible murder, there is an angry accusation. When forthright opposition leader Chokri Belaid was gunned down in broad daylight outside his home in Tunis, furious protesters marched on the offices around the country of the ruling Ennahda party. Belaid’s brother, Abdel Majid, accused the Islamist [...]

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Tunisia: Murder most foul

by News Sources 02.07.2013

Al Jazeera reports: Tunisians of all political stripes are in shock after the killing of Shokri Belaid, leader of the Democratic Patriots party. Of all the political turmoil the country has experienced since the 2010-11 uprising, the slaying of the leftist politician – a well-known opposition figure and vocal critic of the ruling coalition – [...]

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Tunisian government dissolved after opposition leader’s killing sparks fury

by News Sources 02.06.2013

Reuters reports: Tunisia’s ruling Islamists dissolved the government on Wednesday and promised rapid elections in a bid to calm the biggest street protests since the revolution two years ago, sparked by the killing of an opposition leader. The prime minister’s announcement that an interim cabinet of technocrats would replace his Islamist-led coalition came at the [...]

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In Tunisia the embers of unrest remain hot

by News Sources 01.14.2013

Bloomberg reports: Two years after he set himself on fire, Mohamed Bouazizi remains history’s most famous fruit vendor. Like many enterprising Tunisians, Bouazizi, 26, was subject to constant fines of as much as 10 times his daily earnings as he tried to make a living on the streets of Sidi Bouzid. After his scale and [...]

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Video: Al Jazeera talks to Rachid Ghannouchi — re-imagining Tunisia

by News Sources 09.22.2012
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Extradition of Gaddafi deputy plunges Tunisia into political crisis

by News Sources 06.27.2012

Time.com reports: With political upheaval in Egypt and Libya and calamitous violence in Syria, the one stable point of the Arab Spring seemed to be Tunisia, where the wave of revolutions began 19 months ago. Now even that looks in doubt. Before dawn last Sunday, Tunisian officials dragged the country’s highest-value detainee — Muammar Gaddafi’s [...]

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Video: Tunisian president has ‘nightmares’ of yet another revolution

by News Sources 05.12.2012
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Video: Tunisia’s multiplying media

by News Sources 05.05.2012
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Tunisian court case exposes rift over free speech in new democracy

by News Sources 05.04.2012

The Washington Post reports: Outside the courthouse, 16 armed police officers screen all comers, including hundreds of lawyers in flowing black robes. Beyond a wall of barbed wire, a throng of bearded young men angrily shout slogans. The scene sends a clear message: Could be trouble here. The subject of all this attention is a [...]

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Neoliberals, not Islamists, are the real threat to Tunisia

by News Sources 03.31.2012

Matt Kennard writes: I meet Mustafa and Kamal on Avenue Bourguiba, where they protested in January 2011 to get rid of the dictator who ruled their country with an iron-fist for 23 years. Tunisia has changed a lot since then – and celebrated its 56th independence day last week as a free nation. Both men [...]

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Video: Tunisia debates religion’s role in new constitution

by News Sources 03.30.2012
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Tunisia: The Arab Spring’s success story?

by News Sources 01.07.2012
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Islamist democratic victory in Tunisia

by News Sources 10.28.2011

Reuters reports: Tunisian electoral officials confirmed the Islamist Ennahda party as winner of the North African country’s election, setting it up to form the first Islamist-led government in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings. But the election, which has so far confounded predictions it would tip the country into crisis, turned violent when protesters [...]

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Can the West stop worrying and learn to love the Islamists?

by News Sources 10.25.2011

Tony Karon writes: Tunisia’s election and Libya’s celebration of the overthrow of Col. Muammar Gaddafi won’t have made for a happy weekend among those fevered heads in Washington who believe the West is locked in an existential struggle with political Islam: If anything, the Islamist tones of the Libyan celebrations, coupled with the Islamist victory [...]

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Huge turnout in Tunisia’s Arab Spring election

by News Sources 10.23.2011

Reuters reports: Tunisians turned out in huge numbers to vote in the country’s first free election on Sunday, 10 months after Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in a protest that started the Arab Spring uprisings. The leader of an Islamist party predicted to win the biggest share of the vote was heckled outside a [...]

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Tunisia is leading the way on women’s rights in the Middle East

by News Sources 09.15.2011

Brian Whitaker writes: Last December, Tunisians rose up against their dictator, triggering a political earthquake that has sent shockwaves through most of the Middle East and north Africa. Now, Tunisia is leading the way once again – this time on the vexed issue of gender equality. It has become the first country in the region [...]

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Tunisians still wait to celebrate democracy after the revolution

by News Sources 06.17.2011

Angelique Chrisafis reports: Wiping his hands on his apron as chickens turned on a spit, Haj Ali Yocoubi gestured from his restaurant towards a burned-out building and a few carcasses of cars. The chef in his 50s witnessed some of the worst repression of January’s Tunisian revolution, when police killed several young protesters in Ettadhamen, [...]

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The slap that sparked a revolution

by News Sources 05.18.2011

The Observer reports: Manoubia Bouazizi has grown used to the idea that her son Mohamed no longer belongs to her but to the Arab world. In the streets near where she lives on the outskirts of Tunis, she is stopped by people who recognise her, who have heard she is the mother of the market [...]

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Faces of the displaced

by News Sources 04.04.2011

For more than a month, refugees have been fleeing the violence and uncertainty of Libya into Tunisia. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees has reported nearly 180,000 people have fled — a rate of 2,000 a day. Most end up at border transit camps, desperately trying to find a way home. Here are the [...]

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Art challenges Tunisian revolutionaries

by News Sources 03.26.2011

Al Jazeera reports: A crowd has gathered to ponder the black-and-white photographs which have been pasted across the face of building that was, until recent, the local offices of the former president’s much-loathed party. “I have no idea what these photos mean. Do you know?” Meddeb Nejeb, a high school teacher, asks Al Jazeera. He [...]

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The West’s fear of equality

by News Sources 03.20.2011

Haroon Siddiqui, at the Toronto Star, spoke to the long-exiled recently-returned Tunisian Islamist leader, Rashid Gannoushi, who said: “Islam is not a threat to the West. The popular revolutions sweeping the Middle East are not against the West but, in fact, influenced by the concept of freedom, egalitarianism, justice, rule of law. The West should [...]

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Obama does not get it

by News Sources 03.09.2011

Lamis Andoni writes: Barack Obama, the US president, has still not fully grasped the essence of the revolutions underway in the Arab world. He genuinely seems to believe that the people rallying for democracy in the region are making a pro-Western, if not pro-Israeli, statement. “All the forces that we’re seeing at work in Egypt [...]

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Intifada update

by News Sources 03.07.2011

Storming Egypt State Security The video speaks for itself. We stormed into the notorious political police main HQ in Cairo after the authorities didn’t dismantle the apparatus. We did it ourselves. The end of the video shows an former Islamist detainee who discovered an electric torture tool explaining how he was tortured on it. Glory [...]

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Intifada update

by News Sources 03.06.2011

Egypt and Tunisia’s unfinished revolutions It’s been just seven weeks since President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia, and just over three weeks since Hosni Mubarak was unceremoniously dumped from the presidency by the Egyptian military — but both countries have already unseated their interim prime ministers. Egypt’s Ahmed Shafiq on Wednesday followed last [...]

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