Serious police presence.

As there is no description given, judging by the appearance of people, the signs, the dress and general look, I would have to say that this is either a new donut shop opening in Toronto, or police anticipating an attack on the French embassy in Tunis.

H/T Magic Martin

“Here in Tunis – anticipating an attack on the French Embassy after the Friday prayer”

Tunisia: rioting, calls for jihad, black flags (Al Rey) and more ‘Arab Spring’ fallout

TUNISIA Protesters have thrown tomatoes and stones at Tunisia’s President Moncef Marzouki in Sidi Bouzid, where the Arab Spring started exactly two years ago.

Mr Marzouki was swiftly evacuated by security officers, disrupting his rally to mark the anniversary.

Protesters invaded the square where Mr Marzouki had addressed a crowd of about 5,000 people, AFP news agency reports.

They threw tomatoes and stones, forcing security officers to evacuate him and parliamentary Speaker Mustapha Ben Jaafar.

BBC:


H/T Magic Martin

Tunisia descends into turmoil

 DW.DE

Members of the leftist UGTT union, background, react during clashes with League members 
Foto:Amine Landoulsi/AP/dapd

Middle East

Two years after the ‘Arab Spring’ revolution in Tunisia, the country is in turmoil. The economy is paralyzed, and the political, religious and social gulf between Islamists and the secular opposition is growing wider.

Hundreds of people have been hurt in protests since the end of November. In the Northern town of Siliana supporters of Tunisia’s largest trade union UGTT protested against police abuse and social grievances. In the course of several days, more than 300 people were hurt in clashes with security forces.

In the Tunisian capital Tunis, radical Islamists attacked members of the UGTT, who were gathered outside the union’s headquarters on December 4 to mark the 60th anniversary of the assassination of its founder.

Elsewhere in the country the situation is tense. Two years after the beginning of the rebellion that became known as the ‘Arab Spring’, the country has still not found peace. The self-immolation of a Tunisian vegetable vendor triggered the initial wave of discontent and protests that quickly spread across the Middle East.

Click to continue:

Tunisian Islamists, leftists clash after job protests

 Reuters:

  • Members of main labour union body UGTT and pro-government Islamists clash near riot police during a gathering where UGTT members called for a general strike and downfall of the government led by the Islamist Ennahda party in Tunis December 4, 2012. REUTERS/Anis MiliView PhotoMembers of main labour union body UGTT and pro-government Islamists clash near riot …
  • TUNIS (Reuters) – Tunisian police broke up fighting in Tunis on Tuesday when pro-government Islamists attacked labor union members they blamed for inciting protests last week against the Islamist government.

    Several hundred Islamists with knives and sticks charged a gathering of members of Tunisia’s biggest union, UGTT, in the capital and broke windows at its offices with stones, a Reuters witness said. Police then intervened to separate the two groups.

    About 10 people were hurt in the clashes, the witness said.

    “UGTT, you are thieves, you want to destroy the country,” the Islamists chanted. They also carried banners.

    Hundreds of UGTT members, who backed days of protests over lack of jobs and development in the deprived town Siliana last week, had been chanting slogans in the streets by the UGTT headquarters calling for a general strike and the downfall of the government led by the Islamist Ennahda party.

    “Ennahda will end up like Ben Ali. They have not chosen their enemy well,” said one demonstrator, referring to Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the veteran autocrat toppled in the Arab Spring uprising in January 2011.

    Click to continue:

    H/T Magic Martin

Violence in Tunisia: already 5 days of rioting in Siliana

H/T Magic Martin

Translation: Michael Laudahn

Ici France

Tunisia riot map

 

Riots have erupted saturday for the fifth day in a row in Siliana, epicentre of Tunisian ire vis-a-vis the hopes deceived by the 2011 revolution, and violence has also occurred at a neighbouring town, according to witnesses.
Like these past days, some hundred youngsters have attacked police in Siliana throwing stones, and one officer was injured at his head, according to an AFP journalist.

The forces of order have responded by shooting a major amount of teargas, while protesters again constructed barriers made of tyres and burning branches.

Some 20 km away from Siliana, in Bargou, inhabitants have blocked a road and thrown stones at police vehicles rolling towards Tunis, according to witnesses and a security source. The forces of order responded by using teargas.

Meanwhile, negotiations have been under way in Tunis between the government and trade union representatives, who claim the retreat of police reinforcements, the resignation of the Siliana gouvernor, and an economic assistance plan for this disadvantaged region.

Still in Tunis, 200 persons demonstrated – like the past days – before the interior ministry at Avenue Habib Bourguiba, supporting the population of Siliana who they consider a victim of police repression.

The rulers fear an expansion to other regions, and say to refuse to cede to violence, while riots already have erupted in two more tunisian cities, during the night from friday to saturday.

The demands expressed in Siliana remind of those at the 2011 revolution’s origin, the government – under leadership of the islamist Ennahda party – being accused to have failed in its economic policy. Since the start of the violence, some 300 persons have been injured.

More videos below the fold.

Thanks to Magic Martin for digging them up for us.

Continue Reading →

Swords vs guns: Islamist killed in clash with Tunisia police

Middle east Online:

Oct. 31 2012

Islamists wielding swords attack two national guard posts in Manouba following arrest of Salafist suspected of assaulting security chief.

Middle East Online

Radical Islamists have carried out a number of attacks in Tunisia since Ben Ali’s ouster

TUNIS – Radical Islamists in Tunisia raided two national guard posts Tuesday, leading to clashes with security forces that killed one attacker, the interior ministry said.

Wielding sharp tools and swords, the Islamists went on the attack in the Tunis suburb of Manouba after police arrested a Salafist Islamist suspected of assaulting the head of the suburb’s public security brigade, said interior ministry spokesman Khaled Tarrouche.

The attacks were carried out by “a large number of people with radical religious tendencies,” Tarrouche said.

“The response by the security forces led to the death of an attacker who was hit by a bullet,” he said.

Click to continue:

Filmed unknowingly, Rached Ghannouchi drops his masque

France 24:

An original Translation by Michael Laudahn

Filmed unknowingly, Rached Ghannouchi drops his masque. The polemic rises in Tunisia after statements made by the islamist chief Rached Ghannouchi, asking the salafists to show ‘patience’ and ‘wisdom’, while the islamists may consolidate their power against the secular forces. Often accused of maintaining a double discourse, Rached Ghannouchi finds himself in the centre of a polemic presently raging in Tunisia, after a video was put online on october 9 showing the chief of the Tunisian islamist party Ennahda, filmed without his knowledge.

On the footage, he asks salafist visitors to show ‘patience’ and ‘wisdom’ while the islamists may consolidate their power against the secular forces. During all of his statements, Rached Ghannouchi [always] opposes the secular versus the islamist camp, insisting on the Tunisian society’s bi-polarisation. ‘The secular forces, although a minority, control the media and the economy’, he says in the video put online early this week and shot, according to the Tunisian media, last february.

The administration, although under the Ennahda’s control, is also in their hands’. Warning against the resurgence of the Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique – RCD, former president Ben Ali’s party, dissolved in march 2011 -, he continues affirming twice that the army and the police ‘are not sure yet [with regard to their allegiance]’. Adding: ‘I say to our salafists to have patience […] Why precipitate? Take your time to consolidate what you have acquired’, obtained by the islamists since the revolution.

‘Today, we do no longer have a mosque, we do have a ministry of religious affairs, we do no longer have a shop, we do have a state’, he insisted. Explaining his ‘small steps’ strategy, Rached Ghannouchi cites as an example the case of the Algerian islamists. ‘Don’t you believe a way back is not possible? This is what we thought in Algeria in the 90s, but our judgement was erroneous: The mosques fell back into the secular forces’ hands, and the islamists were again prosecuted’, he argued.

Spread massively on the internet via social networks, the video has had the effect of a bomb with the political class and media in Tunisia, who rose against the content of this speech and the split-tongue displayed by the islamist chief. His opponents accuse him of maintaining a double discourse aiming at concealing a radical agenda which he never renounced to apply, while furnishing to the public the moderate and democratic image of his party.

The ‘Le Quotidien’ paper notes this thursday that ‘the most severe thing in his [Rached Ghannouchi’s] opinions is saying that the islamaists must absolutely discard the secular forces […] and put their hands on the Tunisian administration and all the state’s levers, in order to strike root and avoid reproducing the Algerian failure’. On its part, the arabophone daily ‘Le Maghreb’ evokes ‘a scandalous video recording’ and ‘the truth of the salafist project of Rached Ghannouchi’.

The opposition has qualified the video’s contents as ‘very severe’, displaying ‘the double discourse of Ennahda’.

Mr Ghannouchi ‘casts discredit on the institutions, this man owes them explanations’, reacted Issam Chebbi, Parti Républicain (centre) on Radio Mosaïque FM. This thursday, several deputies of the constituting national assembly have organised a reunion, in order to discuss means and actions to to take vis-à-vis this video. Ennahda, on its part, denounces a conspiracy, comparing the putting online of the video ‘to the spy and montage methods handed down by the ancien régime’. In a communiqué published october 10, the party denounces ‘cut and mounted sequences’, aiming at deforming the statements of its chief, specifying especially that Rached Ghannouchi referred to the corrupt minorities reattached to the ancien régime, when he indicated that the army or the police have not [yet] been conquered by the islamist cause.

According to the chief of the islamist party, the opinions of this latter ‘were in the framework of the attempts of the Sheikh to convince the salafists to avoid violence, and to participate pacifically in political life in Tunisia’.

For Salim al-Abyad, professor of political sociology at the Université de Tunis el-Manar, interviewed by FRANCE 24, ‘it is logical that Ennahda tries to minimise the impact of this video, trying to justify its contents, considering the fact that it has caused a vast debate in Tunisia and shocked a good number of tunisians’. According to him, the spreading of this video comes during a tense electoral context. The next elections are expected to be held in march 2013, after the adoption of the new constitution, presently edited by the constituting assembly which was the result of the ballot held in october 2011, which was dominated by Ennahda.

‘Tunisia is in the middle of an electoral campaign, putting this video online is part of the electoral battle which runs presently, and the political parties attempt to settle their accounts’. According to Salem al-Abyad, the video showing the conversation between the islamist leader and several young salafists could have several consequences.

‘This speech could provoke a descent in trust of the democratic intentions of Ennahda, while giving credit to those claiming that Ennahda pratcises a double discourse, and could at short-term disturb the process of democratic transition’, notes he. To conclude: ‘This party, which holds the power and which owes itself to represent all tunisians, should refrain from running charm operations with salafists, and on the other side stop to deny the existence of a heterogenous society in Tunisia, while evoking endlessly a bipolarisation between secular and islamist forces’.

TUNISIAN CHILDREN’S MAGAZINE SHOWS KIDS HOW TO MAKE A MOLOTOV COCKTAIL

Sadly not a misprint.

Because that’s the first thing that’s on any kid’s mind, how to light someone else on fire. Kind of reminiscent of the Hamas’ kiddie program featuring mice and bunnies that incite children to commit acts of terrorism. So no folks, this is nothing new.

H/T:  EAS

RTNews: A Tunisian children’s magazine “Kaws Kouzah” has recently published a detailed step-by-step instruction of how to make a Molotov cocktail. Now the periodical is facing a lawsuit for endangering kids lives.

The Tunisian Ministry for Women and Family Affairs has expressed concern that the article’s content poses a threat to children’s lives, as it “encourages” the use of Molotov cocktails in acts of “vandalism or terrorism.”

The piece, published under the “knowledge corner” subsection, contained a detailed instruction on the assembly of the deadly mix. The article, employing colorful illustrations, read a “Molotov cocktail – is a home-made incendiary weapon which consists of a glass bottle and a folded cloth dipped in a flammable liquid – oil, alcohol, petrol.”

The article also provided origin of the term.

“The name was coined by Finnish soldiers in World War II in honor of Vyacheslav Molotov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union during the Winter War, also known as the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940.”

But the most shocking section of the description found by the ministry read, “the unit should be ignited and thrown at the enemy. After the initial contact, the bottle breaks and penetrates the target.”

Last month thousands of enraged Muslim activists rallied around the American embassy in Tunisia until finally storming it, burning the American flag, looting property and setting buildings on fire.

Elsewhere in the Muslim world, demonstrators used Molotov cocktails as they expressed their anger over the kitsch movie Innocence of Muslims, mocking the Prophet Mohammed.

 

Molotov cocktail for kids: Tunisian children’s magazine publishes deadly recipe

H/T Taffy in Canada

Russia TV

 Published: 09 October, 2012, 03:21
Image from facebook.com/MonSeulPays

Image from facebook.com/MonSeulPays

A Tunisian children’s magazine “Kaws Kouzah” has recently published a detailed step-by-step instruction of how to make a Molotov cocktail. Now the periodical is facing a lawsuit for endangering kids lives.

­The Tunisian Ministry for Women and Family Affairs has expressed concern that the article’s content poses a threat to children’s lives, as it “encourages” the use of Molotov cocktails in acts of “vandalism or terrorism.”

The piece, published under the “knowledge corner” subsection, contained a detailed instruction on the assembly of the deadly mix.  The article, employing colorful illustrations, read a “Molotov cocktail – is a home-made incendiary weapon which consists of a glass bottle and a folded cloth dipped in a flammable liquid – oil, alcohol, petrol.”

The article also provided origin of the term. 

“The name was coined by Finnish soldiers in World War II in honor of Vyacheslav Molotov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union during the Winter War, also known as the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940.”

Click to continue:

Tunisia: Police rape victim charged with ‘indecency’

ANSA.It

Gang raped by police, ministry criticizes media and civil society

27 September, 20:29

A Tunisian woman holds the national flag and shouts slogans during a demonstration in Tunis (archive) A Tunisian woman holds the national flag and shouts slogans during a demonstration in Tunis (archive)

(ANSAmed) – TUNIS – The Tunisian Interior Ministry on Thursday reprimanded Tunisian media and civil society for rallying in support of a young woman who was raped by police officers, but also confirmed that the violence did take place.

”The justice system is based on facts, and the judges will base their verdicts based on the facts at hand,” Faouzi Jaballah from the Interior Ministry told reporters.

His comments followed on widespread outrage after the 27-year-old victim was summoned by the investigating judge on Wednesday to face charges of ”indecency” from the two police officers accused of raping her.

Click to continue: