Ennahdha Party leaders stop eating to protest their imprisonment on terrorism and money laundering charges.
Three leaders of Tunisia’s opposition Ennahdha party are on hunger strike to protest their detention and deprivation of fundamental rights in what is widely seen as part of the government’s crackdown on opponents of President Kais Saied.
Sahbi Atig, 64, has been on hunger strike for 32 days. His health has seriously deteriorated, his wife, Zeineb Mraihi, said Monday after visiting him in prison.
Atig, a member of Ennahdha’s Shura council, was arrested on May 6 on his way to a conference in Turkey. He has since been detained on “suspicion of money laundering”.
“He has lost 17 kg [37lbs]”His heart rhythm is weak and he can hardly speak,” Mraihi said, adding that Atig spent several days in intensive care at a hospital a week ago.
‘Dangerous policy’
Ennahdha issued a statement on Monday after another leader, 54-year-old Ahmed Mechergui, a former MP and chief of staff to the party’s leader, went on hunger strike to protest his detention since April 18.
“Forcing detainees to go on hunger strike as a last resort to defend themselves is a dangerous policy and a great risk to the lives of Tunisians whose only fault is their disagreement with the ruling authorities,” the statement said.
It also referred to the detention of activist and Ennahdha Shura member Youssef Nouri, who was arrested around the same time as Mechergui. Nouri has been on hunger strike since April 24 to “protest the lack of the most basic and fundamental rights of prisoners,” his lawyer Latifa Habbechi said on the first day of his strike.
On Saturday, Ennahdha published a petition by 52 Tunisian law professors calling on the government to release “all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience imprisoned without justification or due process.”
In March, the European Parliament in a non-binding resolution condemned Saied’s “authoritarian drift”, saying the detainees are “terrorists” involved in a “conspiracy against state security”.
The Ennahdha Party was the largest in parliament before Saied dissolved the chamber as a component in July 2021 of a power grab that allowed him to rule by decree in the only democracy that emerged from the uprisings of the Arab Spring more than a decade ago.
A Tunisian court last month sentenced Ennahdha leader Rached Ghannouchi to a year in prison on terrorism-related charges, which the party condemned as an “unjust political verdict”.
Ghannouchi and Atig are among more than 20 Saied political opponents and personalities arrested since February, including former ministers and businessmen.