Tunisians protest against police repression

SANAA, Jan. 31 (YPA) – Hundreds of young people took to the streets of the Tunisian capital on Saturday to protest against police repression and demand the release of demonstrators detained in recent days, the AFP reported.

The protesters marched from Tunis’s central Human Rights Square to Habib Bourguiba Avenue, trying to make their way to the interior ministry, according to the AFP reporter, but security forces blocked their path.

Denouncing what they say is police repression and government corruption, some demonstrators held signs that read, “Police everywhere, justice nowhere”.

Some threw plastic water bottles at security forces, while others chanted slogans including “Down with police rule” and “Release the nation’s sons (from detention)”.

Mired in a political and economic crisis worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic, Tunisia has been rocked this month by a wave of social unrest, a decade after Arab Spring protests ousted the autocratic regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Security forces have carried out mass arrests, including of minors, after more than a week of night-time riots and daytime protests against police repression, poverty, corruption and unemployment.

E.M