TUNIS: Hundreds of members and supporters of Tunisia’s largest trade union rallied Thursday in support of the organisation facing mounting pressure from President Kais Saied.
This marked the largest demonstration Tunisia has seen in recent months, coinciding with what rights groups have denounced as a rollback of freedoms in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.
The Tunisian General Labour Union remains an influential counterweight to Saied, who has jailed many of his critics since a sweeping 2021 power grab.
“With our soul and our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for the UGTT,“ some protesters chanted while waving the union’s red-and-white flag.
Others demanded an end to the rising cost of living and decried the “injustices” of living under a “police state”.
AFP reporters at the scene estimated the crowd to be more than two thousand people, while one local media outlet put it at three thousand five hundred.
Dozens of protesters were seen being barred by the police from joining the rally in downtown Tunis.
With some seven hundred thousand members across the country of twelve million, the UGTT maintains its significant power to mobilise people.
However, it has increasingly come under fire in recent weeks from the president and a segment of the public frustrated with repeated strikes in transport and the key phosphate production sector.
Speaking to the crowd outside the union’s headquarters, UGTT chief Noureddine Taboubi denounced what he called “false information” and a “methodical campaign” against the union.
“Our country is going through a delicate phase,“ he said. “All the foundations of political and civil life have collapsed.”
Earlier this month, the union said a group of Saied supporters tried to storm its Tunis headquarters, with videos showing several dozen people gathered outside denouncing it for “corruption” and “squandering the people’s money”.
The following night, Saied demanded the union be held accountable while saying he shared the demonstrators’ grievances and insisting they had not intended violence.
Rights groups, however, said the anti-union gathering was aggressive and sought to intimidate the union.
Founded in 1946, the UGTT played a leading role in the struggle against French colonial rule and later resisted autocratic presidents Habib Bourguiba and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
It was also central to the 2011 revolution that toppled Ben Ali and ignited protests across the Arab world. – AFP
