By Tala Youssef | Staff Writer

After calls for protest against the government, the Tunisian authorities recently banned citizens from participating in any rallies, with police closing off Tunis’s main avenue. Thousands of protestors defied the protest bans last weekend, demanding the resignation of the President on Habib Bourguiba Avenue, the martyrs square of Tunisia. These protesters are part of the National Salvation Front, combining a few political parties with different ideologies, that share the goal of ousting Saied. They chanted against the draconian measures that the President has been taking to amass more power. 

Demonstrators chanted against the crackdown on political opponents. In recent months, Kais Saied ordered the arrests of more than 20 political figures opposing him and he accused them of being foreign agents. There seems to be no way out for these political opponents since Saied’s government took away the independence of the judiciary. 

In a recent populist speech, Kais Saied painted immigrants as the scapegoat of Tunisia’s economic downturn. He said that they take jobs away from Tunisians, and raise crime rates in the country. He proceeded to call for the arrest of all irregular migrants, in his hate speech that was condemned by the African Union. Ever since, long lines at different embassies have been seen with migrants trying to get back home safely. This governmental pressure caused employers to fire their workers, and landlords to kick out their migrant tenants, in fear of getting prosecuted. Sub-saharan Africans came to Tunisia, a fellow African nation, in pursuit of a better life, but they were faced with attacks by the head of state they sought.

More than a decade after initiating the Arab Spring, Tunisians’ civil liberties, which they fought so hard for, are again under attack. The country is said to have been moving towards a police state since Kais Saied took over, in a context of economic hardships and stalled IMF bailout talks.