This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/22/tunisia-unrest-government-imposes-night-curfew-unemployment-protests-attacks

The article has changed 6 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 2 Version 3
Tunisia imposes curfew as unrest grows Tunisia imposes curfew as unrest grows
(about 2 hours later)
Tunisia has imposed a nationwide overnight curfew in response to growing unrest over unemployment as protests across the country descended into vandalism in several cities. Tunisia has imposed a nationwide overnight curfew after protests and violence against rising unemployment spread across the country.
The curfew from 8pm to 5am begins on Friday because the attacks on public and private property “represent a danger to the country and its citizens,” the interior ministry said. The curfew, to be imposed from 8pm until 5am, was announced after skirmishes between police and protesters in the early hours of Friday in the impoverished suburbs of Tunis. The capital is braced for mass protests this weekend.
On Thursday night, police stations came under attack and security officers used teargas to repel protesters armed with stones and molotov cocktails. The violence followed a week of unrest across the country which police said had injured 59 officers and 40 protesters. The protests carry echoes of Tunisia’s Arab Spring revolution in December 2010, which saw the downfall of former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
In housing projects on the outskirts of the capital, Tunis, roving groups of young people attacked a bank and looted stores and warehouses. “We have the freedom, but you cannot eat freedom,” said unemployed graduate Saber Gharbi, “There is a big similarity between 2011 and now. The same people are in the street for the same reason.”
In the clashes on Friday, molotov cocktails were thrown at police while gangs of youths looted shops, warehouses and a bank in the capital’s Ettahamen and Sidi Hassan districts. The prime minister, Habib Essid, cut short a visit to the Davos World Economic Forum and was due to meet a delegation of protesters.
The country is already under a state of emergency declared after a suicide bomber killed 12 members of the presidential guard in central Tunis in November.
Related: Tunisia: 'Nothing’s changed since the revolution' – in picturesRelated: Tunisia: 'Nothing’s changed since the revolution' – in pictures
Tunisia’s prime minister, Habib Essid, is cutting short a visit to France to deal with the protests, which began on Sunday after a young man who lost out on a government job climbed a transmission tower in protest and was electrocuted. Rioting against unemployment began last Sunday, when a young protester, Ridha Yahyoui, angry at being denied a government job, scaled a pylon in the southern town of Kasserine and was electrocuted.
Tunisia’s unemployment stands at about 15%, but among young people the rate is 30%. Violence in Kasserine, one of the poorest cities in Tunisia, has since spread to eight more towns and cities. Riot police, troops and armoured cars have been deployed along the capital’s leafy Habib Bourguiba boulevard.
Leila Omri, the mother of an unemployed graduate in Kasserine, said: “Are we not Tunisians too? It’s been four years I’ve been struggling. We’re not asking for much, but we’re fighting for our youth. We struggled so much for them.” In Tunisia’s Arab Spring revolution, the spark for dissent was also the death of a young protester, a market trader who set himself ablaze in the town of Sidi Bouzid. Within a month dictator Ben Ali had fled and democracy proclaimed.
Tunisia has been in a state of emergency since a suicide bombing in November killed 12 members of the presidential guard in the heart of Tunis, an attack that capped an unusually violent year for the country. That bombing, as well as attacks earlier in the year at the Bardo museum and in the tourist beach town of Sousse, were claimed by Islamic State. But while Tunisia’s democracy has endured, even as fellow Arab Spring states Egypt, Libya and Syria have fallen into war or dictatorship, prosperity has not come with it.
The suicide five years ago of an unemployed young person in Kasserine set off a popular uprising that overthrew Tunisia’s longtime ruler Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and eventually gave rise to the Arab Spring. Joblessness now stands at 15%, higher than the 12% at the time of the revolution. The International Labour Organisation reports that among young people the figure is double the national average, at 32%, rising to 40% in rural areas.
The World Bank says economic reform has been frustrated by the inability of successive governments to grapple with byzantine laws enacted to benefit the elite of the Ben Ali regime.
“Tunisia has become a more – not less – unequal society in the past decade,” the World Bank said in a recent report. “Its richer coast is at odds with its poorer interior. Its largest coastal cities – Tunis, Sfax and Sousse – account for a whopping 85% of its GDP and most of its industries and services.”
The economy was also hit hard by terrorist attacks last year at the capital’s Bardo museum and the Sousse beach resort. There have been mass hotel closures and fears for the jobs of 400,000 Tunisians employed by the tourism industry. Away from the coastal cities, a climate of hopeless and despair has taken root among the young.
“Politically Tunisia has done well, the political transition has succeeded, but the economic side has been a disaster,” said Oxford University professor Michael Willis. “You still have the old corrupt structures of the Ben Ali regime in place. I think this [protest] has been coming for a while.”
Compounding the economic misery has been falling demand from Europe, which accounts for nearly three quarters of Tunisia’s exports.
Meanwhile, the country is dealing with the fallout from civil war in neighbouring Libya. And domestic politics are also fraught, with the ruling Nidaa Tounes party split in a leadership crisis over the enhanced role of President Beji Caid Essebsi’s son Hafedh, who party rebels complain is being groomed as his father’s successor.
Western powers have promised more support, with the United States quadrupling security aid and the European Union promising more assistance. The country’s profile was boosted last month when the Nobel Peace prize was awarded to a quartet of civic organisations praised for preserving democracy during a political crisis two years ago.