As journalists and observers of Africa and the Mediterranean had their attention drawn towards the genocidal horrors in Gaza and Sudan, the Tunisian dictator, Kais Saied, has increasingly got away with more repression in his home-country,
Since abrogating parliament in 2021, Kais Saied has jailed his opponents and only increased his authority and repression, by jailing critics and activists, prosecuting journalists, and even blackmailing the Tunisian business community to pay him bribes and support him politically. Kais Saied has not only captured the entities of the state but has also captured the private economy and plunged the country further into economic disaster. The EU tolerates his gangster-like behaviour because he has successfully blackmailed Europe to provide his government with aid in exchange for blocking immigrants from crossing the Mediterranean Sea.
Human rights abuses against migrants in Tunisia have only increased with the support of EU funding. Kais Saied blamed the disastrous state of the economy on Black African immigrants and often implied that Tunisians are less African than Black Africans, stoking racism and division in the country. Government crackdowns on immigrants in Tunisia were also brutal with many immigrants sent back to their literal deaths as they were dropped in the middle of the desert and told to walk back (all backed with EU funding).
Kais Saied is a gangster who is pretending to be a statesman and is probably suffering from serious lapses of memory since his similar dictatorial predecessor, Ben Ali, and the previous equivalent counterpart in the east, suffered a very typical revolutionary fate. Kais Saied is expecting to revive the Tunisian dictatorship and get away with it. He surely has a limit to the extent he can blame Black immigrants for his criminality and economic disaster.
The Maltese Herald will increase its focus on Tunisia starting next year. Tunisia was once home to tens of thousands of Maltese, and the country has a rich Maltese heritage.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
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