Demonstrators demanding jobs clashed with security forces as protests spread across Tunisia. A social eruption on such a scale is virtually unprecedented in this highly repressive and tightly controlled North African country.
Eighteen-year-old Mohammed Amari was shot dead when police opened fire on demonstrators in Sidi Bou Zid, a town some 200 kilometres east of the capital, Tunis. The protests began there on December 17 when police confiscated the merchandise of 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi, accusing him of trading illegally without a permit.
He set fire to himself in protest at his treatment.Bouazizi survived his ordeal and was taken to a burns unit in Tunis.
But another young man has since committed suicide by touching a high-voltage cable. Before he died he shouted, “No to misery! No to unemployment!”The desperation of these young men reflects the high level of unemployment in Tunisia.
Officially, joblessness is 14 percent, but the real level is much higher.More than half of all job-seekers have university degrees and half of the population is under 25 years of age. This situation has forced many young people into the informal sector, where they try to make a living by street trading. Many of those deemed to be self-employed are in dire straits.
Reports on the demonstrations are very limited because journalists are being excluded from the towns where protests have taken place. The government has prevented the opposition newspapers Tareeq-al Jadid and Al Mawqif from appearing because they carry reports of the protests.
The protests have broken out because the economic situation in Tunisia has deteriorated as a result of a decline in trade with Europe, the country’s main trading partner and source of tourism. Tunisia is heavily reliant on tourism and agriculture. There is now stiff competition from other Maghreb countries as well as Egypt and Israel for the tourist market and declining demand from cash-strapped Europeans.
But the economic problems facing Tunisia are not of a temporary character. They reflect long-standing efforts to reorient the economy to the global market under pressure from the major imperialist powers. A structural adjustment programme is in place, under which the prices of basic commodities are no longer subsidised. State-owned enterprises have been privatized and jobs slashed.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/tuni-d30.shtml
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