TUNIS (Reuters/AFP) – Tunisia’s powerful UGTT labor union rallied in the capital on Saturday in what appeared to be the biggest protest yet against President Kais Saied, staging a show of strength after his recent crackdown on opponents.
Many thousands of protesters filled Habib Bourguiba Avenue, the main street in central Tunis, holding banners that read “No to one-man rule” and chanting “Freedom! End the police state”.
They were marching after weeks of arrests targeting prominent opponents of Saied, who has staged his first major crackdown since he seized wide-ranging powers in 2021, shutting down parliament and moving to rule by decree.
“We will continue to defend freedoms and rights, whatever the cost. We do not fear prisons or arrests,” UGTT leader Noureddine Taboubi told the crowd.
“I salute the jurists and politicians in Mornaguia prison,” he added, referring to recent detainees.
Hamma Hammami, head of the Workers Party, said protests were the answer to what he called Saied’s “creeping dictatorship”. “He wants to spread fear but we are not afraid,” he said.
The crackdown is the biggest since Saied’s seizure of powers and his opponents say it is increasingly clear that he has dismantled the democracy won in the 2011 revolution that triggered the Arab Spring and will end the freedoms it brought.

Fearful Sub-Saharan Migrants Flee

Meanwhile, around 300 nationals of Ivory Coast and Mali were to be flown home from Tunisia on Saturday, fearful of a wave of violence against sub-Saharan migrants since Saied delivered a controversial tirade against them last month.
In his February 21 speech, Saied ordered officials to take “urgent measures” to tackle irregular migration, claiming without evidence that “a criminal plot” was underway “to change Tunisia’s demographic makeup”.
Saied charged that migrants were behind most crime in the North African country, fueling a spate of sackings, evictions and physical attacks against the community.
The African Union expressed “deep shock and concern at the form and substance” of Saied’s remarks, while governments in sub-Saharan Africa scrambled to organize the repatriation of hundreds of fearful nationals who flocked to their embassies for help.