Hundreds protest against government in Tunis

(Patria) - Hundreds of people demonstrated yesterday in the capital of Tunisia against the government under the slogan "opposition is not a crime", calling for the release of detained activists, AFP reported last night.

The rally was called following the recent arrests of three opposition figures convicted of "conspiracy" against the state.

Tunisia emerged from the Arab Spring era of uprisings as a democracy, but after Kais Saied carried out a sweeping takeover of power in 2021, human rights groups have criticized a significant reduction in freedoms.

Dozens of Saied's critics have been prosecuted or imprisoned, including on terrorism charges and under a law the president enacted in 2022 to ban the "dissemination of false news".

Demonstrators held portraits of several of them.

"Since the coup, things have completely changed. We have seen our freedoms gradually taken away, even though we had a revolution. It's a descent into hell," Hager Chebbi, daughter of recently arrested opposition figure Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, told AFP.

Amnesty International stated that the trial and Chebbi's arrest are part of the authorities' "blind and repressive escalation" in cracking down on dissenting voices.

"Fifteen years after the revolution, it's as if the dictatorship has officially marked its return," Ahmed Benchemsi, spokesperson for Human Rights Watch for the Middle East and North Africa, told AFP.