Rights Groups Decry Tunisia’s ‘Injustice’, Crackdown on Activists

International NGOs, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have decried a sharp decline in civil liberties and a pervading “injustice” in Tunisia since President Kais Saied came to power in 2019, as authorities escalate their crackdown on the opposition, activists, and foreign nongovernmental organizations. 
  
“Tunisian authorities have increasingly escalated their crackdown on human rights defenders and independent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) through arbitrary arrests, detention, asset freezes, bank restrictions, and court-ordered suspensions, all under the pretext of fighting ‘suspicious’ foreign funding and shielding ‘national interests,’” Amnesty International said in a statement on Friday. 
 
Tunisia’s crackdown on civil society has reached an unprecedented level, according to Amnesty, as six NGO workers and human rights defenders from the Tunisian Council for Refugees are “being criminally prosecuted on charges solely related to their legitimate work supporting refugees and asylum seekers.”  
   
After President Kais Saied’s sweeping power grab in July 2021, when he dissolved parliament and expanded executive power so he could rule by decree, Saied jailed many of his critics. That decree was later enshrined in a new constitution. 
 
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