Tunisian opposition activist Chaima Issa starts hunger strike to protest violent arrest

Tunisian opposition activist Chaima Issa has begun a hunger strike to protest the violence she says she suffered during her arrest on Saturday, according to local media reports.

Her family said the prominent human rights activist was injured in the foot during her arrest and required medical treatment.

Issa was arrested to serve the 20-year prison sentence she received on Friday in a controversial mass trial, which saw sentences of up to 45 years handed down on appeal to dozens of opposition figures. They were accused of "conspiracy against state security" and "belonging to a terrorist group".

Right groups have condemned the trial as "politically motivated" and the latest verdict as being part of a "relentless campaign to erode rights and silence dissent".

The 37 defendants, most of whom were imprisoned after their arrest in early 2023, were accused of, among other things, meeting with foreign diplomats.

In the initial trial in April, they were handed heavy prison sentences of up to 66 years after just three hearings and without closing arguments.

At the end of the appeal trial on Friday, Issa saw her sentence increased from 18 to 20 years, as did other prominent opposition figures like Jawhar Ben Mbarek, Ghazi Chaouachi, Ridha Belhaj and Issam Chebbi. Like some other defendants, Issa benefited from a provisional release measure and was released from jail in July 2023, after spending more than five months in custody.

On Saturday, she was arrested during a demonstration organised in downtown Tunisia to protest the growing crackdown on dissent and rights activists under President Kais Saied.

"We were marching in the protest when a group of plainclothes officers grabbed her and pushed her inside a vehicle," Issa's lawyer, Samir Dilou, told AFP.

"They could have arrested her the day of the verdict at her home," Dilou added. "She wasn’t going anywhere. If she wanted to go on the run, why would she be demonstrating?"

Ill-treatment

Since Saied’s coup d’état in the summer of 2021, in which he granted himself sweeping powers, local and international NGOs have denounced a rollback of rights and freedoms in the North African country that started the Arab Spring.

Dozens of critics of Saied have been prosecuted or imprisoned, including on terrorism-related charges and under a 2022 law the president introduced to ban the "spreading of false news".

Tunisia arrests prominent opposition leader to enforce jail sentence

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Issa - a writer, journalist and activist who took part in the 2011 protests that ousted longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali - is a co-founder of the Citizens Against the Coup collective and a member of the National Salvation Front (NSF).

One of the main opposition coalitions in the country, the NSF was founded in 2022 around Ennahda, a party that had dominated Tunisian politics since the 2011 revolution. Its leader, Rached Ghannouchi, has been in detention since 2023 and received a total of 37 years in prison across several cases, including charges of unlawful foreign funding and plotting against the state.

NSF co-founder Mbarek, another defendant in the "conspiracy" case, announced on Monday through his family that he had suspended the strict hunger strike he had been undertaking for 33 days to protest what he described as his “unjust” and “arbitrary” detention.

He explained that his decision was prompted by "the vibrant democratic street" that "has proven its capacity to defend our rights and to convey the suffering of political prisoners", following a demonstration that drew around 3,000 people 10 days ago and another protest with several hundred participants last Saturday.

Mbarek was hospitalised eight times following a severe deterioration in his health and, according to his family and lawyers, was subjected to "violence" by guards and fellow detainees in early November, who "beat" him to force him to eat "until he lost consciousness".

His defence filed a complaint for "acts of torture" and the prison administration has opened "an administrative investigation", according to his lawyers.

In addition to being denied a fair trial, political prisoners in Tunisia have for years denounced the ill-treatment they say they suffer behind bars, regularly reporting "humiliation" and "harassment".