Tunisia

After days of demonstrations and turmoil, Prime Minister Ali Larayedh addressed the public in Tunisia on Monday. Despite calls that he resign in favor of a national unity government, he insisted that he will remain in office, and apparently there will be no major cabinet shuffle. He did make a concession in guaranteeing that new […]

An estimated 50,000 came out in Tunis for the funeral of the assassinated leftist opposition member of parliament Mohamed Brahmi, leader of the pro-worker Popular Front. [Estimate here). Brahmi was shot 14 times outside his home on Thursday by an unknown assailant. A major suspect is extremist Boubakr al-Hakim, a former recruiter of fighters for […]

The assassination Thursday of opposition member of parliament Mohamed Brahmi (from the small far left Popular Front coalition) shook the country for the second time this year, following on a similar killing in February of another Popular Front figure, Chokri Belaid. Thousands demonstrated throughout the country against the ruling Renaissance (Ennahda or al-Nahda) Party, a […]

A Tunisian court has given suspended sentences to three European members of Femen (2 French, 1 German) who had bared their breasts in public to protest the jailing of a Tunisian woman who had made her statement in the same way. They had been found guilty of public indecency and sentenced to four months in […]

Hard line Salafi fundamentalists (who are small fringe in Tunis) showed up at a language school in Tunisia’s capital on Wednesday to attempt to stop the filming of a video clip of the Harlem Shake, electronic-music performer Baauer’s internet sensation in the Trap genre. One of the Salafis had on military khakis and carried a […]

The resignation of Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali in Tunisia has created a political crisis that the elected government will have to deal with. Jebali is a politician of the Muslim religious right, from the Ennahda Party, and had led an Ennahda-dominated cabinet in coalition with two smaller secular parties, Moncef Marzouki’s social democratic Congress for […]

On Friday, tens of thousands of Tunisians took to the streets to protest the shocking assassination of leftist, secular politician Chokri Belaid earlier this week. He had been the leader of a small opposition party and had been an outspoken critic both of the ruling al-Nahda Party and of the neighborhood militias that sprung up […]