TUNIS — Mothers trembled with anger demanding justice for sons shot dead during protests that ushered in democracy. Former prisoners described being tortured, humiliated and forced to engage in homosexual acts. The abuses, they recalled, were deliberate, sadistic and aimed to break them.
“Torture in the prison was not systematic, it was chaotic,” said Sami Brahim, who was arrested as a student in the 1990s. “Everything that happened in Abu Ghraib has already happened in Tunisia,” he said, referring to the abuses by American troops in the notorious prison in Iraq.
That was just the first day of testimony in long-awaited public hearings by Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission, an effort unique in the Arab world to salve the wounds from nearly 60 years of dictatorship and give a modicum of recognition and respect to the victims and their families. Seven witnesses testified live on national television and radio Thursday evening in a highly charged ceremony. A second evening of testimony is scheduled for Friday. Much of the nation is riveted.
It is the first time that Tunisians have been given a state venue to air the horrors of decades of systematic human rights violations under both President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who was overthrown during the Arab Spring, and his predecessor, Habib Bourguiba.
“This is a momentous day for the establishment of the Constitution and the rule of law,” Sihem Bensedrine, the president of the Truth and Dignity Commission, said in an opening speech. “Victims of despotism are entitled to fairness and justice, and this is the message we are conveying to the whole world.”
Over the past two years, the commission has taken in 65,000 complaints from victims — investigating about 10,000 of them so far — but has struggled against political and institutional resistance and a hostile national news media, which has accused it of spending money but doing nothing.
With the public hearings, Ms. Bensedrine said she hoped to win greater public support and push back against the current government’s argument that stability and reconciliation are more important than reopening old wounds.
The audience on Thursday included many politicians and activists who themselves had suffered imprisonment, torture and exile under the dictatorships. There were also representatives of truth commissions from Africa, Asia and Latin America, and foreign diplomats. Senior Tunisian government officials were conspicuously absent.
The setting was fittingly symbolic, a reminder of the corrupt regime that oversaw some of the worst abuses: Club Elyssa, a luxurious spa in a northern suburb of Tunis that was once owned by Leila Trabelsi, the former first lady and wife of the ousted president, Mr. Ben Ali.
“It is a way for us to say that society is finally recovering such ill-gotten places to underscore the principle of the rule of law,” Ms. Bensedrine said when announcing the venue.
The significance of the setting was not lost on those who testified, including Ourida Kaddouss, whose 27-year-old son, Raouf, was shot in the head during protests in Sidi Bouzid, where a young man had set himself on fireand initiated the Arab Spring nearly six years ago.
“You could not even say Leila’s name,” she said, recalling the times under Mr. Ben Ali. “And here we are now in Leila’s palace. If Leila comes back, we will be ready. We are not going to let them.”
But mostly, she said, she wanted justice for her son and her family.
“We gave our most valuable thing we have and you forgot us,” Ms. Kaddouss said. “We want the rights of the revolution, we want dignity, we want to live freely.”
She and two other mothers who testified complained that the military tribunals that tried the killers of their sons had handed down lenient or suspended sentences for the perpetrators.
Ribeh Briki, whose son Slah Dachroui was one of 300 people who died in Tunisia during the Arab Spring protests of 2011, held up her son’s picture.
No comments:
Post a Comment