“… instead of responding to the demands of the Tunisians ‘who have sacrificed their lives for freedom, the Constituent Assembly is discussing non-existent problems like identity or the niqab’.”
But harping on Islamic morality is an easy way for a government to look piously busy while avoiding more meaningful issues. “Tunisia: revolution betrayed, return of protests, blogger,” from ANSAMed, December 22 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
(ANSAmed) – ROME, DECEMBER 22 – A year after the start of the ‘Jasmine Revolution’, people in Tunisia will start demonstrating again. This prediction was made by Tunisian blogger and symbol of the revolution, Lina Ben Mhenni.
”One year ago people in Tunisia demonstrated to ask for social and economic reforms and for more freedom, not for another government that tells us how to be good Muslims,” she said in an interview with ANSA, referring to the Ennahda Islamic party that won the elections in October. ”On the outside it looks like a moderate party, but the truth is different,” she explains: instead of responding to the demands of the Tunisians ”who have sacrificed their lives for freedom, the Constituent Assembly is discussing non-existent problems like identity or the niqab.” And ”people are already organising sit-ins and demonstrations: Ennahda has promised 600 thousand jobs in two years and people are now claiming what was promised for their vote,” the 28-year-old Nobel Peace Prize candidate continued. Moreover, ”articles that criticise Ennahda,” the moderate Islamic party in the Tunisian government, ”have started to disappear” from the social networks and blogs used by Tunisians to breathe life into the Jasmine Revolution.
As regards to the other media, newspapers and television, ”the situation has not changed from the period under Ben Ali”, the President who was ousted in the Tunisian Spring, added the activist. ”Before the elections everybody could say what they wanted, now the lies and manipulations of the truth are back: the media sing praise to the new President and the new power.”