Tunisian Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi assured Tuesday that the anger was
"legitimate"
, while advocating firmness in the face of violence, after several nights of clashes in marginalized neighborhoods hit hard by a social crisis accentuated by the coronavirus.
"The crisis is real and the anger is legitimate and the protests too, but the violence is unacceptable and we will face it with the force of the law,"
Hichem Mechichi said in a televised speech Tuesday evening.
Read also: Violence in Tunisia ten years after the revolution: what is happening?
“Your voice is heard and the role of the government is to turn your demands into reality”,
he added, but the right to demonstrate
“must not turn into the right to loot, steal or break”.
Unrest had erupted in several regions on Friday, the day after the tenth anniversary of the fall of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, ousted from power by the crowd on January 14, 2011. Every evening since, in disadvantaged areas, protesters, young people for most are meeting after the curfew in place since October to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
They throw stones and some fireworks or Molotov cocktails at the police, who fire large amounts of tear gas.
Tuesday evening, the situation seemed calm in Ettadhamen, a large working-class district on the outskirts of Tunis where clashes have taken place in recent days, AFP journalists noted.
On Monday, the Interior Ministry reported more than 600 arrests.
These disturbances, which many politicians claim to be solely the result of delinquents, were followed Tuesday by demonstrations against the political class and police repression, bringing together a few hundred people in Tunis and Sfax.
“Work, dignity, national freedom”,
chanted the demonstrators in particular, taking up slogans of the revolution, brought together through appeals launched on social networks, despite the ban on assembly decreed for health reasons.
“Desperation has spread. The virus adds to poverty and unemployment. Ten years later (the revolution, editor's note), our requests are not materializing
,
”
lamented Donia Mejri, 21, a student in the humanities.
In Tunis, they were repulsed by the police who fired tear gas in the afternoon on the main avenue of the city, a center of power that has since 2011 become a place of contestation.
Nighttime unrest has taken place since Friday despite a curfew from 8 p.m., in effect since October to try to stem the novel coronavirus pandemic.
These clashes come as the pandemic has destroyed thousands of jobs, and disorganized schools, where students have only attended every other day since September, after a semester of complete closure.