Campaign for Peace and Democracy

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We Support the Democratic Revolution in Tunisia

Statement by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy

January 16, 2011

//www.cpdweb.org/tunisia.shtml

We express our
solidarity with the Tunisian people in their struggle against a repressive and
corrupt regime.

                Unemployed youth, students, trade unionists,
lawyers, and the full range of opposition parties, in the cities and in the
rural areas, have taken to the streets and -- for the first time in the Arab
world -- ousted a dictator.

Tunisia has always
had just the façade of democracy. Its ruling party won
every single seat in the parliament in 1989, and every directly elected
seat in the 1994, 1999, and 2004 elections. President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
had been in office since 1987, when he deposed the previous autocrat, Habib
Bourguiba. Ben Ali abolished the position of “president for life,” but then ran
unopposed for president in 1989 and 1994, and got 99.44 percent of the vote in 1999, 94.5 percent in 2004, and,
running against three opponents, 89.6 percent in 2009.

 The U.S.
Government’s annual human rights report summarized the situation in Tunisia
this way:

“There were
significant limitations on citizens' right to change their government. Local
and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) reported that security
forces tortured and physically abused prisoners and detainees and arbitrarily
arrested and detained individuals. Security forces acted with impunity,
sanctioned by high-ranking officials. There were also reports of lengthy
pretrial and incommunicado detention. Government imposition of severe
restrictions on freedoms of speech, press, and association worsened in the
lead-up to the October [2009] elections. The government remained intolerant of
public criticism, and there were widespread reports that it used intimidation,
criminal investigations, the judicial system, arbitrary arrests, residential
restrictions, and travel controls to discourage criticism.”

Tunisia ranked number 154 out of
173 countries in the 2009
Reporters Without Borders list of World Press Freedom rankings, down from 143
in the previous year. OpenNet
Initiative found that the Tunisian government engaged in “pervasive”
filtering of political and social internet sites, using U.S.-made software.

            Corruption
by the president and his inner circle was notorious. The U.S. Embassy reported,
in a cable
released by WikiLeaks, that “one
Tunisian lamented that Tunisia was no longer a police state, it had become a
state run by the mafia.” Commented the U.S. Ambassador in a secret cable:
“Whether it's cash, services, land, property, or yes, even your yacht,
President Ben Ali's family is rumored to covet it and reportedly gets what it
wants.”

While political
insiders have been living in luxury, life is hard for
the vast majority of Tunisians. In 2005 46 percent of young college graduates
did not have a job 18 months after graduation; nearly 50 percent of
Masters graduates and graduates with advanced technician diplomas were
unemployed. And in response to pressure
from the IMF and the World Bank, government subsidies continue to be
reduced or eliminated from food and gasoline, squeezing even those who have
jobs.

Despite
Tunisia’s record of repression, Washington has long had “very good relations”
(in the words of the State
Department’s Background notes) with the country. The two nations have “an
active schedule of joint military exercises.” Tunisia
is one
of only five countries (the others being Israel, Egypt, Jordan and
Colombia) that receive direct U.S. military aid.  In fact, as recently as December 2010, when the uprising against
Ben Ali was already building, Congress authorized $12 million in “security assistance”
to the Ben Ali dictatorship.

               On January 11 of this
year, as demonstrations raged in the country and the regime responded with
lethal repression, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared
that the United States “was not taking sides.” And the French
foreign minister suggested that French police forces could help police in
Tunisia "appease the situation through law enforcement techniques."
Only after Ben Ali fled the country did the White House, on January 14, finally condemn the violence against peaceful demonstrators. Until
then, support of the Tunisian government
was justified on the grounds that it was a “partner against terrorism” and a “moderate” Arab voice that did not join the Arab
consensus against Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.

 We call on
Washington and Paris, the two major props of the regime, to keep their hands off Tunisia, allowing the Tunisian
people to establish a society that provides full democratic rights and social
justice. We demand that the Tunisian security forces
end all acts of repression, and we oppose any sort of military takeover. There
must be no interference with the right of Tunisians to create a new civilian
government through free and fair elections involving all political parties. In
addition, we call for an end to IMF/World Bank pressure on Tunisia to
reduce food and gasoline subsidies. Such policies are typically characterized
by the U.S. as “reforms,” but they only deepen the misery of the Tunisian
people.

Whether the toppling of the dictator will lead to
fundamental changes in Tunisia remains to be seen. But there is no doubt that
U.S.-backed autocrats throughout the Middle East ought to be very worried. May
this be an inspiration for people seeking real democracy everywhere, from Egypt
to Jordan to Saudi Arabia … to the United States.

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Campaign for Peace and Democracy, New York, NY     www.cpdweb.org    cpd@igc.org