by MARIEME HELIE LUCAS
On the eve of the elections in Tunisia that will shape the future of the country and even that of the Arab world as well, Western do-gooders and Islamic fundamentalists hand in hand rejoice in ‘Tunisia’s first free elections’ and its access to ‘ democracy’. The recent history of Iran and Algeria have taught us better… And women in Tunisia watch in horror the rise of Muslim fundamentalists, as a possible replication of the Algerian scenario of 1989 .
‘Until the Ayatollahs came to power in 1979, Tehran, Istambul, Beirut, Cairo, Amman, Damascus, Baghdad, Algiers, Tunis and any city in Morocco and even Tripoli, had among their populations the most secular elites…. How was the secular stamp rubbed out in most of these societies in the space of three decades?’, asks Saeed Naqvi in an article (‘Turmoil in the Arab World: Attack on Secularism’) published on October 20 in the Deccan Herald.
The answer is simple: ‘By terror’, by terrorizing dissenters,- as we have seen in Algeria, with 200 000 victims in ten years time in the 90s. As was the case in Iran. As is now going on in Tunisia.
Since the self immolation of young Mohamed Bouzidi on December 18, 2010, in protest against the situation of jobless Tunisian youth – moreover harassed by the police -, what are the facts that the international community and the Left at large chose to ignore or underplay ? The euphoria of ‘the people’s revolution’ systematically eludes the main question: who are ‘the people’? What are the political forces at work within it. Who were they, who are they in Tunisia today? Let us judge by their actions.
It took them less than a month after the first anti Ben Ali demonstrations to appear in the open:
Saturday, Jan 29: While thousands of citizens march peacefully ‘ for equality and citizenship’ and to demand secularism, here is a first hand testimony published on face book by a woman demonstrator; she describes how a group of youth ‘headed by a bearded man’, started chasing peaceful demonstrators, especially women; she herself is sexually assaulted and ‘beaten up with the wooden stick of a flag’, her colleagues are ‘beaten on their back while they try and flee, their banners are torn and some are slapped in the face’. She states: ‘ These thugs demonstrated that these extremists are in no way the ‘democrats or moderates’ their leaders pretend they are, as is said in all the media’.
SIAWI for more
(Thanks to Harsh Kapoor of SACW)