Day: September 26, 2021

Several thousand demonstrators rallied Sunday in the Tunisian capital to protest President Kais Saied’s seizure of power, calling on him to step down in the biggest show of public anger since his intervention.

Saied this week brushed aside much of the 2014 constitution, giving himself power to rule by decree two months after he sacked the prime minister, suspended parliament and assumed executive authority.

“The people want the fall of the coup,” chanted the crowd on Tunis’s Habib Bourguiba Avenue, a focal point of the demonstrations that ended the rule of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, 2011. “Step down.”

Police maintained a heavy presence around the demonstration and set up barricades.

The crisis has endangered the democratic gains that Tunisians won in the 2011 revolution that triggered the Arab Spring protests and has slowed efforts to tackle an urgent threat to public finances.

Saied has said his actions, which his opponents have called a coup, are needed to address a crisis of political paralysis, economic stagnation and a poor response to the coronavirus pandemic. He has promised to uphold rights and not become a dictator.

Nadia Ben Salem said she traveled 500 km (310 miles) from the south to express her anger.

“We will protect democracy … the constitution is a red line,” she said, holding up a copy of the constitution.

Support for Saied

Saied still has wide support among many Tunisians who are tired of corruption and poor public services and say his hands are clean. Dozens of his supporters appeared at the demonstration. Police separated the two camps.

“We support Saied because he declared war against a corrupt political class,” said a man who would only give his first name, Ahmed.

Saied has not put any time limit on his seizure of power but said he would appoint a committee to help draft amendments to the 2014 constitution and establish “a true democracy in which the people are truly sovereign.”

Teacher Abdelfattah Saied said it was time for the president to go.

“He is acting like he is the sun that is rising on the country, the general prosecutor, the president, the parliament, the government. Like he is everything,” he said.

Clear escalation

Political analyst Slaheddine Jourchi said the protest was a clear escalation against the president and that there was a risk of further divisions among Tunisians if the doors of political dialog remained closed.

Tunisia’s largest political party, the moderate Islamist Ennahda, called for people to unite and defend democracy in “a tireless, peaceful struggle.”

Ennahda has been the most powerful party in Tunisia since the 2011 revolution that led to the ousting of Ben Ali, playing a role in backing successive coalition governments.

But Saied’s actions have left it facing a split. More than 100 prominent officials of Ennahda, including lawmakers and former ministers, resigned on Saturday in protest at the leadership’s performance.

After the intervention, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, which have long mistrusted Islamists across the Middle East, indicated their support for Saied.

Tunisia’s influential labor union on Friday rejected key elements of Saied’s actions and warned of a threat to democracy. The first protest against Saied since his intervention on July 25 took place last week.

Source: Voice of America

Theoneste Bagosora, a former Rwandan army colonel regarded as the architect of the 1994 genocide in which more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and Hutus who tried to protect them were killed, died in a hospital in Mali on Saturday.

His son Achille Bagosora announced the death in a Facebook post: “Rest in Peace, Papa.”

Bagosora was serving a 35-year sentence after being found guilty of crimes against humanity by the then-International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Bagosora, 80, had been sentenced to life in 2008 but on appeal his sentence was reduced to 35 years in prison.

Known as a hardliner within the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development party of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, Bagosora in 1993 was appointed Cabinet director in the defense ministry and took control of military and political affairs in the country.

The position made him answerable only to the president. When the president died in a plane crash, Bagosora took over the affairs of state and ordered the massacre of Tutsi, Donat Rutayisire, a genocide survivor who knew him, told The Associated Press.

Canadian Gen. Romeo Dallaire, head of United Nations peacekeepers in Rwanda at the time, described Bagosora as the kingpin behind the genocide.

After the genocide, Bagosora fled into exile in Cameroon. He was arrested there in 1996 and flown to face trial in Arusha, Tanzania, in 1997. His trial began in 2002 and lasted until 2007.

Bagosora was found guilty in connection with the killing of 10 Belgian peacekeepers and responsible for the deaths of the Rwandan prime minister and head of the constitutional court. He was also found responsible for organized killings of Tutsi at numerous sites in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, and in Gisenyi in the west of the country.

Reacting to the news of Bagosora’s death, Rwanda’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Olivier Nduhungirehe, said Bagosora didn’t show remorse for his crimes.

“The main reasons against Bagosora’s request for early release were that he never accepted responsibility for genocide, showing no sign of remorse or regret; and that he is a man with a forceful personality who at times is unable to control himself,” Nduhungirehe said in a Twitter post.

Bagosora’s application for early release was turned down earlier this year, with the judge ruling that he had failed to demonstrate rehabilitation.

Source: Voice of America