The victims of tyranny and the need for transitional justice in Tunisia

While listening to the victims of tyranny in the relay sessions organised by the Truth and Dignity Commission in Tunis on 17 and 18 November, one can clearly see that repression in the police state era was shared by the vast majority of the people of Tunisia. The repressive machinery did not distinguish between women and men, young and old, leftists and liberals, nationalists and Islamists or trade unionists and human rights activists. They all shared the suffering, torture and marginalisation and endured the systematic injustice that befell them from the agents of a totalitarian regime.

For decades after independence but before the revolution, you only needed to criticise the regime’s policies or think outside the prevailing box to become a suspect. When you joined a human rights association or belonged to an opposing political party, you would be cursed by the regime, which meant being under constant administrative control and police surveillance; being imprisoned and exposed to abuse and harassment. You could even be killed or forced into exile. Thus the opposition activist found himself torn between silence and death, getting caught or fleeing the country.

Furthermore, activists were banned from work and travel and prevented from becoming civil servants. The tyrannical regimes of Habib Bourguiba and his successor Zine El Abidine Ben Ali discriminated against citizens based on their political affiliation, granting them access or preventing them from whatever they wished, depending on their loyalty to the ruling party.

The repressive organs of the state used various devices to chase opponents and mute their voices. They succeeded, to some extent, in guaranteeing the repression process, using mass media to broadcast propaganda speeches that demonised the opposition within and beyond the borders of Tunisia.

These state institutions also got help from the police, who invented allegations against the opposition and used the judiciary to hand out cruel verdicts. Doctors were even bribed into hiding medical records of torture, guaranteeing that the oppressors would escape punishment.

After the revolution, observers thought that the new state would give sufficient care and justice to the victims of tyranny. However, little has changed since the Tunisian Spring; the same victims remain marginalised and forgotten, with muffled voices and grieving hearts. They have still not obtained their legitimate rights to this day.

The symbols of the counter-revolution, such as mass media journalists and politicians, began the process of whitewashing the dictatorship and pushing people to lose faith in the revolution as they polished the image of the ousted dictator. In the meantime, they insisted on ridiculing the militants’ sacrifices even though it was these self-same militants who paved the way to freedom with their lives and suffering. It was only with the establishment of the aforementioned Truth and Dignity Commission that these victims could speak up and reveal their suffering to the world.

Every victim attending these sessions has had the opportunity to speak, exposing the violence of the repressive state and its arrogance and disrespect for human beings and their rights. Gilber Naccache, for example, spoke of the cruel torture he underwent, such as being trussed upside-down. The brother of Nabil Barakati — who was killed under torture — mentioned that his brother had his nails pulled out and his teeth and limbs broken.

The experiences of Rachid Chamakhi, Faysal Baraket and Kamel El-Matmati were no better; they all died at the hands of the torturers. There were even those who vanished without trace under the previous regimes, which still distresses their relatives. El-Matmati’s mother’s sole hope is to find the corpse of her son and bury him properly.

Jamel Baraket now has a phobia about the police as a result of the harassment he endured in the cellars of the interior ministry during Ben Ali’s rule; he claimed that Faycal Garbaa was driven insane by the torture to which he was subjected. Ourida Kaddouci declared that the marginalisation of the poor regions and their deprivation from basic amenities is a kind of torture that made lot of citizens suffer and led them to protest against the dictatorship. Besma Belaii, meanwhile, stated that the oppressive state stole everything from her, including her dreams.

The wife of Bechir Labidi travelled from prison to prison across the length and breadth of Tunisia in order to spend precious time with her husband and son. The secret police watched her every step and made her life a living hell. This is how it was for all of the families of those who suffered at the hands of the oppressors.

The witnesses exposed the superficiality of the claim that Bourguiba’s government was progressive and that a state of law prevailed during the time of his successor Ben Ali. They also revealed the scope of human rights violations. What they have exposed collectively at the Truth and Dignity Commission is important for the rewriting of Tunisia’s history without power-driven bias.

However, there is a problem in that only the victims have responded positively to the opportunity to address their grievances; those responsible for their torture have kept away from the commission and not taken part. This is a clear indicator of the continued denial of their wrongdoing by the oppressors.

The presidency was also absent from the commission’s opening ceremony. It was expected that such a historic event would have some symbolic presence at the very least, to express support for and solidarity with the victims and to condemn the abuse by the state apparatus.

It is now crucial for transitional justice to be empowered and for the Truth and Dignity Commission to be left alone to fulfil its role, thus enabling the victims to get on with their lives and integrate back into society. They should get both material and psychological compensation for the damage that has befallen them, in the hope that this will heal their wounds.

Furthermore, it is important for a law to be introduced to criminalise the whitewashing of dictatorships so that those longing for a lost past put an end to their hopeless ventures of falsifying Tunisian history and turning truth into falsehood and falsehood into truth.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.