He has been described as “the godfather” of the Tunisian revolution that toppled former Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and also as “Mr Against” for his oppositional attitude. Hamma Hammami has been part of, or led, Tunisia’s banned Communist party for several decades. He has also consistently been one of the Tunisian government’s boldest and most outspoken critics, something that continues to this day.

Hammami has paid dearly for this though, having spent around a decade in prison.

He has been described as “the godfather” of the Tunisian revolution that toppled former Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and also as “Mr Against” for his oppositional attitude. Hamma Hammami has been part of, or led, Tunisia’s banned Communist party for several decades. He has also consistently been one of the Tunisian government’s boldest and most outspoken critics, something that continues to this day.

Hammami has paid dearly for this though, having spent around a decade in prison.

The story of his struggle, as he describes it, starts in 1973, when he became part of a banned Marxist-Leninist movement in Tunisia. Two years later, he was sentenced to eight-and-a-half-years imprisonment, of which he served six years and during which time he was brutally tortured.

He was later sent to France for treatment for his injuries at the state’s expense. This was the only time that former Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba admitted that there was torture in his prisons – albeit implicitly.

Hammami remembers clearly one of his meetings with Bourguiba in 1980. He and fellow activists had been called to meet the late President to explain why they were so opposed to his policies. Bourguiba told Hammami and his fellow activists that: “these people do not deserve imprisonment, they are amongst the greatest of statesmen”. Those words did not, however, lead to Hammami’s freedom; he still went to prison for his opposition to Bourguiba.

And his days in jail did not end with the recent Tunisian revolution, in early 2011. Two days before the then-Tunisian President Ben Ali fled the country, Hammami was arrested and imprisoned once again because of an online video he had made that criticized Ben Ali and his government.

This saw the long time revolutionary living out the revolution’s climax within prison walls. “My feelings were so mixed that I still find it difficult to describe,” Hammami says. “The voices of masses demanding Ben Ali’s departure were so boisterous. I will never forget the panic on the faces of the security men because they were worried about an imminent attack on the building.”

Shortly thereafter Hammami left prison permanently. And he still feels as though this was his greatest achievement. When it was suggested that Tunisia’s prisoners of conscience receive some sort of compensation for their years in prison, Hammami stressed that Ben Ali’s exit and the success of the revolution were the best compensation he could ever imagine.

In early 1986 Hammami founded the Tunisian Workers’ Communist Party and throughout his career, the former professor of Islamic civilization was an advocate for the working class.

Despite this though, and despite his affinity for the working class of Tunisia, Hammami remains a controversial figure today. There are those Tunisians who support his ideas and his modesty and then there are others who accuse him of atheism; his Communist ideas don’t always sit well within a Muslim-majority community.

Hammami doesn’t dispute this. “We cannot stand against the faith of the Tunisian people, the majority of whom are Muslims,” he reasons. Asked about his own beliefs, Hammami says that all beliefs are equal. “Atheism, fidelity and faith are personal freedoms that no one should challenge,” he notes.

As a result – and in order to prevent further criticism from political opponents, in July 2012, the word “Communist” was removed from the party’s name and now it is the Tunisian Workers’ Party.

In October 2011, after the first Tunisian elections were held, Hammami agreed to an alliance with the Ennahda party, who won over a third of the votes.  It was a strange alliance and it didn’t last.

And today, Hammami is “Mr Against” once again, a fierce opponent of the current Tunisian government headed by the Ennahda party. He believes the party has forgotten those on the margins of the party, the disenfranchised and low-income earners, who delivered the Tunisian revolution in the first place.