The list of the martyrs of the Tunisian Revolution

Ci joint la liste des martyrs de la révolution tunisienne du 14 janvier 2011, pour ne jamais les oublier et les garder à  jamais dans nos mémoires et nos coeurs, paix a vos âmes.

Nejib Mhamdi
Mohamed Omri
Ahmed Boulaabi
Wajdi Seyhi
Ghassene Chniti
Mohamed Yassine Rtibi
Marouene Jemli
Abdelkrim Dhifi
Elfadhel Masoudi
Salem Barhoumi
Mohamed Amine Mbarki
Slah Dachraoui
Ramzi Assili
Yakine Guermezi
Belgassem Ghodhbani
Mohamed Khadhraoui
Atef Lbaoui
Walid Saadaoui
Saber Rtibi
Abdelkader Ghodhbeni
Raouf Bouzidi
Walid Griri
Ahmed Jaberi
Mohamed Nasri
Farhat Elbenhissi

Gouvernorat de Tunis

Haythem Raissi
Sahbi Nahdi
Maroua Amina
Helmi Mannai
Wael Tounsi
Chkri Sifi
Mahdi Ouni
Adel Hanchi
Mohamed Kaissi
Aymen Okaili
Hamdi Elbahri
Belhassen Laaroussi
Fathi Elwesleti
Khaled Haddeji
Ahmed Elouerghi
Hatem Mouwaffak
Nabil Ben Laaroussi
Aissa Elhafi
Cherif Mtaa’Allah
Fathi Chelbi
Mahdi Boughanmi
Karim Rouefi
Walid Jamai
Taher Merghni
Makrem Jaouedi
Elyes Elkarrech
Ahmed Ayessi
Hamdi Elbahri
Chokri Elghamlouli

Gouvernorat de Nebeul

Zouhair Souissi
Wissem Ben Salem
Ali Elmiraoui
Wael Khalil
Khalil Thebti

Gouvernorat de Sidi Bouzid

Adel Hammemi
Nizar Sellimi
Mohamed Jebli
Mouadh Khlifi
Chaouki Nasri Haidri
Mohamed Amari
Abdelbasset khadhraoui
Abdelkarim Chawati
Mohamed Salah Bouzayeni
Houssine Neji
Raouf Kaddoussi
Manel Bouallegui
Ridha Bakkari

Gouvernorat de Kairouen

Haikel Bahrouni
Alaa Eddine Theyri
Saber Hilali

Gouvernorat de Ben Arous

Mohamed Alayet
Houssine Ben Chaabene
Mouez Bouheni
Slimene Fajra
Mohamed Fathallah
Anis Houli
Elhedi Mhajbi
Mohamed Nacer Talbi
Karim Ezzouri
Ahmed Elbakkouch
Souhail Riahi

Gouvernorat de l’Ariana

Faouzi Mokaadi
Moustfa Nahdi
Majdi Monsri
Ibrahim Boutriaa
Mohamed Mimouni
Kais Mezlini
Ahmed Kriaa
Ramzi Elmay
Thabet Ayari
Ayoub Riahi
Khmayes Fadhoul
Kamel Yaakoubi

Gouvernorat de Mannouba

Abdessattar kasmi
Samir Riahi
Anis Farhati
Mossaab Mejri
Ridha Sliti
Ali Cherni

Gouvernorat de Bizerte

Mahjouba Nasri
Abdallah Trabelsi
Hassan Trabelsi
Jamel Slouhi
Mohamed Danden
Hamdi Darouich
Sofiene Marzouk
Abdesslem ben Hamed

Gouvernorat de Zaghouene

Nouri Elakibi
Ayoub Hamdi
Mohamed Soltane

Gouvernorat de Gafsa

Hassan Arfaoui
Mosbah Jouhari

Gouvernorat de Sousse

Abdelbasset khadhraoui
Sofiene Nouir

Gouvernorat de Monastir

Narjes Nouira
Nezih Ayyari

Gouvernorat de Sfax

Slim hadhri

Gouvernorat de Jendouba

Hichem Mhimdi

Gouvernorat de Kef

Mohamed Jbebli
Chawki Mahfoudhi

Gouvernorat de Seliana

Lotfi Maaoui

Gouvernorat de Gabes

Rabi3 Boujlida
Naoufel Ghamagui
Hsouna Adouni
khaled Bouzaien
Mohammed zamezmi

Gouvernorat de Beja

Lazhar Kthiri
Wael Boulaaress
Oussama Amdouni

Gouvernorat de Medenine

Aymen Merai
Bayrem satouri

Gouvernorat de Kebili

Riadh ben Aoun
Dr.Hatem Bettaher

Gouvernorat de Tataouine

Mohmed Dghim
Mohamed Ben Salah
Nadhir Momen

Gouvernorat de Tozeur

Abdelkader Makki
Maher LaabidiLamjed Hammi

Libya Horra! Libya Tadeft! Libya Free!

Nothing interesting really I can come up with, I am for the moment just happy for Libyans to have toppled the 42years infamous regime of Colonel Gaddafi. They paid the high price for this victory and I am sure they will make all what is needed to make it worth. A new era has begun for Libya. Long live to the sons and daughters of Omar Mukhtar!

As Tunisian-Egyptian with Libyan origins, I send all my congratulations to Libyans and pray Allah for granting his Paradize for all the Martyrs.

الله أكبر
عاشت ليبيا الحرة
ⵍⵉⴱⵢⴰ ⵜⴰⴷⴻⴼⵜ

 

Du culte de la maigreur au culte de la rondeur: les mentalités ont-elles réellement évolué?

Toutes celles qui comme moi ont été rondes dans les années 90 vous le confirmeront: Dieu qu’il était difficile de s’habiller à cette époque! C’était simple: dans les rayons, pratiquement rien au delà des tailles 42, et le peu d’articles de grande taille qu’on pouvait y trouver ressemblaient plus à des tentes de camping ou des rideaux aux motifs proprement hideux qu’à des vêtements taillés pour être portés par des êtres humains. La femme ronde (grosse, obèse, etc) n’avait pas le droit non plus à l’expression d’un style propre au travers de son habillement: tout se ressemblait, informes uniformes dont la seule fonction semblait être de devoir cacher ces infâmes corps que nous ne voudrions voir.

Puis à l’aube des années 2000 se produit un changement notable: H&M et sa ligne “Big & Beautiful”, Bodyshop et sa voluptueuse Barbie, Oprah Winfrey et ses émules et leurs talk shows, on parle des mannequins qui se droguent pour ne pas manger et on voit des reportages sur les ados anorexiques. Tout ceci parce qu’on a subitement compris que le culte absolu de la minceur non seulement prive les industriels d’un grand nombre d’acheteuses potentielles, mais qu’en plus il est accusé de causer des tas de mal-êtres de femmes dans les monde. Alors on promeut la diversité des formes et des physiques, la féminité multiple. On nous ressort des vieilles théories sur les canons de beauté préhistoriques, petites statuettes de corps pleins de bourrelets à l’appui.

En apparence, les mentalités ont tellement changé au point qu’il est devenu aujourd’hui très courant d’entendre dans une conversation “Une vraie femme avec des rondeurs, c’est plus beau qu’un sac d’os/qu’une planche à pain!“. Sauf que sous ses airs banalement libérateurs pour la femme forte, le nouveau lieu commun est une jolie insulte à toutes les femmes, grosses ou minces. En effet, en quelques mots, cette phrase nous apprend:

1. qu’il existe des vraies femmes et des fausses femmes.
2. que la différence entre les vraies et les fausses se situe uniquement au niveau de l’aspect extérieur: seins, fesses, etc. La question mérite d’être posée: à partir de quel bonnet de soutien-gorge est-on une femme à part entière?
3. que celles qui sont dépourvus d’attribut proéminents sont non seulement éradiqués de la gente féminine, mais également du genre humain dans son ensemble, réduites qu’elles sont à bien tristes objets: planche à pain, sac d’os, table de repassage, au choix.

La multiplication de ce genre d’affirmations, sur les rondeurs, sur le dit “diktat de la mode” ou sur les “magazines féminins” ne peut que nous consterner. La condition féminine a tant stagné entre les 20ème et 21ème siècles, qu’aujourd’hui comme hier et comme avant-hier, on ne veut voir d’une femme que son aspect physique, sa plastique, sa beauté, quels que soient d’ailleurs la façon dont est définie cette beauté. Ce regard superficiel sur la condition féminine prévaut certainement parce qu’il ne fait que reprendre une perspective masculine. Parce qu’il ne faut pas s’y tromper, lorsque l’on dit que “les hommes préfèrent les rondes” ou que “la femme est l’avenir de l’homme” , il ne s’agit que de valider la valeur des femmes par rapport à ce qu’elles peuvent apporter aux hommes, comme si toute la dignité qu’une femme pouvait recueillir de sa vie, c’était d’être un réceptacle fécond et bien agréable à regarder.

Du culte de la minceur ou du culte de la rondeur, décidément, l’évolution des mentalités n’a pas encore eu lieu. Au mieux avons nous eu droit à la remise au goût du jour des mêmes vieux clichés sexistes. Pour s’en défaire, il va falloir aux femmes adopter une posture ferme: ne laisser personne les diminuer dans leur féminité, quelles que soient leurs mensurations, quel que soit leur aspect extérieur.

London Riots: and what if you tried to understand before you condemn?

Il y aura chaque hiver le “scandale des sans-logis” et chaque été la “violence des banlieues”. Abbé Pierre

Individual choice is like the random trajectory of the atoms of a gas or a liquid: on the microscopic scale, an atom changes abruptly its path from right to left, from up to down every milliseconds, but on the macroscopic scale, the liquid or the gas, as a collection of trillions of trillions of atoms, does not benefit from the same freedom of choice, it always ends up following the trajectory you can calculate with laws of physics. A collection of “almost free” individuals form a bound global state.

The microscopic randomness and the macroscopic fatality are a good illustration of the London riots nights. Needless to adopt an apologist attitude. When violence erupts, you can never dismiss individual responsability: because very rare are the situations where striclty saying you cannot make anything else than responding violently. But when violence becomes a mass phenomenon, it goes beyond individual  choices: before you condemn, you have to understand the long process and the numerous  parameters that shape the final collective state. Two, three or ten looters, it is criminality. England in fire three nights in a row, it is a social phenomenon.

Mark Duggan’s murder by police forces was a firestarter event, because it symbolically put in picture what a young generation is experiencing: being offered no alternative to the perpetual “no future” state of being, being forgot God knows why and by God knows who, is to give “death” and violence as an unescapable issue. If the unique interaction these young people have with the State is the perpetual chase game with the police, there is very few chance they consider the land they are living in as a shared good to preserve and to take care of and there is a high probability they have only revenge and hate and destruction to give in return of the disregard they receive.

We all remember the French suburbs uprising of 2005, that also began with the tragic death of two young people electrocuted by a generator during a police chase. When cars where put on fire, comments went on and on about the fail of the ‘integration policy’ and the french multicultural model, the massive immigration, the disastrous unemployement rate in french suburbs, the poverty, the despair of a better future. Everybody called for a readjutment of politics with the civil society in the suburbs and reconsidering of the urban policy. But in the following years, all France managed to do, is to talk about the youth of suburbs, but not with it.

Six years later, the issues of unemployement, poverty, underground economy and social exclusion are unsolved, whereas they are instrumentalized in political debates (french indentity debate, populist parties high scores at elections, islamophobic and xenophobic arguments, etc). Diminished as citizens, asked to prove their “frenchness”, young people of French suburbs are increasingly “out of France”. The most worrying came when the mayor of the small town of Sevran called for the army to come and deal with the gangs. At this point, France officially designated its youth in the suburbs as the ennemies of the Republic. Hopefully, UK will be able to give a better answer to their own youth.

Tel-Aviv is not Tahrir

People say Tahrir Square inspired the world. Revolutionnaries from everywhere will use this template for carrying revolts and ask for dignity, freedom and rights. So when a social unrest movement started in Israel in July 14th, many commentors wanted to see in it one of the many waves generated by the ‘Arab Spring’. The Israelis are gathering in Tel-Aviv in increasing numbers since three weeks (when a young activist settled a tent on Rotschild street) to protest against high rents in Israel. The number of participants have reached 300’000 people.

Even Israelis sometimes say themselves they were inspired by Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. A famous picture shows a protestor carrying a sign saying “Walk like an Egyptian“, and sometimes signs are written in hebrew and in arabic.

But alas, Tel-Aviv is not Tahrir. It is not sufficient to claim making an arab-like revolution for it to be truly one. Our Arab revolutions were, before to be about costs of living (even if it’s true they were too about it), about justice and freedom, end of violence and torture. One of the famous Tunisian mottos even was “Bread and Salt, but not Ben Ali” (“bread and salt” is a Tunisian expression meaning eating very poorly); many Libyans droped out the oil income Gaddafi was giving them and the privileges Arabs had among Berbers in Libya, because they know the Libyan people freedom knows no price high enough to be sold; Bahraini were among the first to rise in February although they are certainly not the poorest in the Arab World, because they don’t want to live in a golden cage.

The problem with the Israeli protests is that they are claiming against Netanyehou government for the very wrong reasons. They complain about high rents but without firmly condemning the aspects of the housing policy that discriminates Palestinians, excludes them out of towns, encourages settlements and land expropriation. By silenting on these issues, they just say they will buy it, if only a little more discount is made. Paying too much taxes is an issue for the Israeli citizen, but nor apartheid, nor the crimes of Tsahal are. The fact that a war criminal like Tzipi Livni endorses the unrest demands proves that the rights of Palestinians are totally out of interest for the July 14th movement.

Many activists say they don’t mention the Palestinian issue in the protests demands because they want the movement to keep “apolitical”. Way of pushing aside the embarrassing questions: indeed, unjustice and human rights violations are beyond ‘politics’ in real democracies, while it is political only in phantom democracies. For the huge majority of the people in the streets in Tel-Aviv, if a little effort is made by the government to lower rents or find solutions to build a new campus for Israeli students, they will easily leave the streets, and carry on with their lives, satisfied with themselves as revolutionnaries with this revolution on the cheap.

Thus, the current Israeli unrest is the negation of Justice, it is the negation of the Tahrir spirit.

Mubarak’s Trial: that special moment in History of Egypt

One year ago, if told that Hosni Mubarak, his sons and the feared Minister of Interior Habib al-Adly were to face charges of corruption, murder conspiracy against unarmed protestors, any Egyptian would have bitterly laughed. We would have believed seeing one day the Nile getting dry or the desert getting green rather than this trial. This morning, when the trial of the ex-dictator opened, I first had this feeling of something truly unreal happening.

I couldn’t believe my eyes – I was watching the trial through the Egyptian TV live stream -  seeing this weak old man lying in his bed, a man that once  held a whole nation under state of emergency for three decades, that stole the country’s wealth and traded so many lives with his personnal power and his clan’s. He was dressed in white, like his two sons Alaa and Gamal. A stupid thought crossed my mind at this moment: “Not in blue?“. I was taking it from all the Egyptian movies where defendants in trials were always wearing blue suits.

The court first went about technicalities for ages, the lawyers were all talking at the same time, the mess was complete.One of the lawyers even asked to the court to proceed to a DNA test on Hosni Mubarak to prove it is the real Hosni Mubarak and not a lookalike, his theory being that the ‘real’ Mubarak was dead since 2004 and the ‘false’ Mubarak being an agent of the American-Zionist conspiracy. At this point I really thought the trial was going to be nothing more than a big joke.

From time to time, the camera was framing this cage where seven men were held, including Hosni Mubarak in his bed and Alaa Mubarak holding a Quran behind his back. Somehow, as a human being I could a bit feel sorry for the humiliating situation: a cage where a sick man was lying. But this feeling was very soon muted by that other voice in me “reminding” me that after all, a man who has ordered mass killings of peaceful protestors, caused the poverty, the misery, the sad destiny of so many men and women I’ll never see on a TV screen, this kind of man, if not ashamed of his records, is certainly beyond feeling ashamed just for a cage or a bed.

The strongest moment of the trial was when the prosecutor read the charges against the defandants. He listed the facts, about the January 25th revolution protestors killings, but also about all the protestors killings since 2000, about the corruption of the regime, about the millions and billions of Egyptian Pounds, about the scandalous gas deal with Israel, about the legitim demands of the people wanting to live better, to live dignifully, met with guns, with torture. I found myself in tears hearing all our country went through because of this man, and I know many Egyptians like me were in tears too. But I was also in tears because I was proud: proud to be part of a country that at the end chose the right side. And thankful: thankful to God to have allowed me to live long enough to see this historical moment of a nation asking for justice. Thankful also to all the martyrs of the Revolution who gave their lives for this New Egypt to exist, this New Egypt where Egyptians say they don’t want anymore to be silent.

After the prosecutors intervention, Hosni Mubarak and his sons announced they were pleading non-guilty. Just hearing Mubarak saying to the president of the court “Efendim” (a honorific denomination in Arabic), was like a… delight. After all, he was now refering to the president of the court with the same denomination that any defendant or person present in the trial had: he was no more above all of us, he was no more above justice.

At the end of this first session of the Mubarak Trial I thought of course of the Arab Spring martyrs, let it be in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, but also to the Iraqis and the Yougoslavians: I remembered the mascarade of a trial they had for Saddam Hussein and also the incredible slowness of Slobodan Milosevic trial that could never even really start before he died. All this waste: its maybe once or twice in History of a country a tyrant is put in front of his deeds and below the justice; for example, in Egypt, we had Pharaoh swallowen by the Red Sea and we have now Mubarak crushed by the will of a whole people asking for its dignity. These very rare occasions act like a massive psychanalysis for the populations. And this opportunity was stolen from Iraqis and from Serbs and Bosniacs. ‘Justice’ can help ‘History’ to take such a ridiculous turn sometimes.

Why Tunisians don’t want to vote?

Tunisians united to oust a dictator: because a whole people wanted their freedom; they wanted to have their right to speak and chose their rulers, the right to live decently and the right to not live with constant fear. So was the Jasmine Revolution of January 14. It is then with much enthusiasm that hundreds of political parties, syndicates and associations were created. It is for building the new country, with a constitution shaped just like its population, that were announced the elections for the constitutive assembly. Many times postponed, due to the difficulties encountered by the transitionnal government to solve the slightest issue regarding to the reforms to lead, and due to the new political game involving the members of the former system, the historical opponents of the regime and the protestors and newcomer in politics afraid to see the revolution fail to fulfil its goal. Finally, the elections are to be hold on October 23rd.

The ISIE (Instance Supérieure Indépendante pour les Elections), managed by Kamel Jendoubi, is monitoring the elections to ensure a fair and transparent process, for the first ever free elections taking place in the History of Tunisia. The ISIE launched a few weeks ago a massive campaign to encourage Tunisians to get registred for the elections. Indeed, until now in Tunisia, the citizens were automatically receiving their voter’s card. The new system asks for potential electors to register in town halls and embassies in a period of time going from July 11th to August 2nd.

The ISIE were providing continuously estimates of the number of registration. Since the very first days, Tunisians did not seem to rush to get registres; the number were low. Less than 2% of Tunisian potential electors registred after the first week, about 25% at the end of the registration period. The ISIE decided to extend for two more weeks the registration period. Disappointing: Tunisians do not seem at all interested in voting.

How come a people that mobilized to topple a regime is indifferent to voting, one of the basic rights they asked for and fought for? Many explanations were given:

• the lack of a “democratic culture”: full generations of Tunisians were never part of their own political system; they never were but spectators to this comedy the old regime was calling “democracy”, knowing what horrible truth lies behind the words. The idea of voting with effective result might be too new to most of the people to take the initiative to register and to chose a candidate. They might actually have made a choice but not dare to make it, fearing the reaction of the rulers, or maybe they do not get that their voice really make a difference.
• the confusion with the old system: the old system did not require registering, thus a large part of Tunisians are not aware that registration is a necessery step.
• the contradictory ISIE guidelines: dates change following you consult one source or the other, required documents to bring change, unclear specifications, etc. Tunisians, whose a great part never voted in their entire life, whose a substantial part is illetrate or two poor to be wired 24/7 for new updates may feel totally lost.
• the contestation: the political game opposing the parties (PDP, enNahdha, etc), where every political leader tries to make coalitions to bring down others, where attacks and rumors hit every side, gives maybe the feeling to the Tunisian population that politicians do not have the interest of the people set as a priority, therefore incitating them to “boycott” the elections. The brutality with which the police breaks sit-ins and protests and the extent of the emergency state might well also contribute in unsecuring the citizen: why would they vote for building a new authoritarian state? Indeed, many of Tunisians often say that since the revolution “nothing has changed“.

Like in most complex situations, the answer is certainly made of all these different explanations. But there is still a last one has – sadly – to consider: maybe, Tunisians do not register, simply because they do not care about voting. The idea in itself seems a bit odd: why did they do a revolution in the first place if they did not care? Well, first, it does not take more than some part (say, 10 or 20%) of a population to carry on a  revolution.This does not mean that the rest of the population do not agree with the idea of a revolution, but that they are not active in the process: they follow it, but from far. Then, given the fact that an authoritarian state cannot survive for 23years without not only by scaring the population, but also by growing in them the uninterest for political matters, a good proportion of the Tunisian population was always very indifferent to politics.

The propaganda is more than convincing about some one-sided truth, it is also about telling “take care of your own business, and we take care of our own“. In such a case, the whole background of the mediatic culture, of the society, of the teaching in schools can evolve into directing people to get interested and focused on secondary matters: consumerism, for example. People died to bring us the right to vote, but what can you do, voting is definetly not as funny as going to shopping, gossiping or watching sports on TV. From my personnal experience, sadly, I have to say that many of our compatriots fall in that category of citizens that have closed their sight to the very idea of participative citizenship. I think that getting rid of this mentality is the biggest challenge of the Revolution: and it will certainly not be achieved by the upcoming elections. If half of the generation of our children are educated to participative citizenship, it will already be an outstanding victory for Tunisia.