Tunisia: Politicians, lawyers launch collective hunger strike in solidarity with opinion detainees

Tunisia’s opposition National Salvation Front has announced that several members of its executive body and supporters will take part in a collective hunger strike starting on Monday, in solidarity with lawyer Ayachi Hammami and all political detainees and prisoners of opinion.

In a statement, the Front said it stands with all detainees who have turned their prison cells into spaces of struggle against authoritarian rule. It said the move is also a protest against what it described as policies that criminalise political and civil activity and free speech.

The Front confirmed its support for the symbolic solidarity hunger strike scheduled for Monday, adding that a number of its executive members and supporters will join it.

It said the decision comes in response to the hunger strike launched by political prisoner Ayachi Hammami, as well as other political prisoners who answered his call for a three-day collective hunger strike starting on 22 December. The strike is in protest against what they see as the denial of their freedom and their detention by a judiciary they described as lacking independence and being under the control of the executive authority.

On Saturday, Tunisian lawyers also announced that they will begin a collective hunger strike on Monday, in solidarity with “detainees and prisoners of opinion” and in rejection of what they called “unfair trials”. The announcement was made in a statement signed by 32 lawyers, including former heads of the Tunisian Bar Association Abdelrazak Kilani and Chawki Tabib.