The World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) denounced on Tuesday January 24 an "
upsurge
" of "
ill-treatment
" which, according to it, amounts to "
moral torture
" against opponents of the Tunisian president since his coup de strength of summer 2021.
Resurgence of ill-treatment
The legal director of the NGO, Hélène Legeay, reported an "
upsurge in recent years of what could be described as moral torture or at the very least ill-treatment perpetrated against people on file
" by the security services.
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This ill-treatment has "
extended since July 25 (2021) to political opponents
", assured Hélène Legeay, in reference to the date when President Kais Saïed dismissed his Prime Minister and froze Parliament, taking full powers in Tunisia.
A “new form of societal control”
According to the OMCT, this situation “
manifests itself in the form of arbitrary restrictions of freedom, repeated restrictions through house arrest, bans on leaving the territory, visits by the police, summonses to the police station.
It is a new form of societal control that wreaks psychological and also material havoc on the people who are targeted
,” added the OMCT official.
Hélène Legeay reported an improvement after the 2011 Revolution which brought down the dictator Ben Ali, with "
less torture piloted directly by the executive power, by the Ministry of the Interior
".
But "
it's coming back more and more, we're seeing institutionalized torture and ill-treatment in protests
," she said, citing spikes in early 2020 and early 2021 with "
extremely violently suppressed protests.
" .
Opponents and LGBTQ+ people first targeted
According to the official, this ill-treatment targets in particular "
protesters, political opponents in general and also members of the LGBTQ+ community who are increasingly victims of torture and institutionalized ill-treatment (...) with the express consent or of the direction of the security apparatus
".
Despite this, "
we are progressing a little bit
" because there are "
trials that are emerging for violence
" with some convictions, underlined Hélène Legeay, while deploring
the "impunity
" enjoyed by police officers or convicted gendarmes who are neither imprisoned nor suspended from their duties.