After local religious extremists tried to torch a number of cultural buildings in the north western Tunisian city of El Kef, including two theatres and the headquarters of a film society, a group of local artists have tried to raise funds to help repair the damaged buildings. However, while they were putting on a public performance, they too fell foul of local believers.

After local religious extremists tried to torch a number of cultural buildings in the north western Tunisian city of El Kef, including two theatres and the headquarters of a film society, a group of local artists have tried to raise funds to help repair the damaged buildings. However, while they were putting on a public performance, they too fell foul of local believers.

On Saturday July 6, the street theatre group, called Fanni Raghman Anni, or My Art Despite Me, put on a show called They Killed Him, a piece of physical theatre that paid tribute to assassinated Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid. The performance was staged in a public square in the city centre and involved the male actors baring their chests. A group of religious individuals – believed to be associated with the more extreme Salafist group – didn’t like the fact that the artists were half-naked and tried to assault them. They said they wanted to prevent the actors from finishing the show because of the bared skin.

Saifuddin al-Jelassi, a spokesperson for the actors, explains how the show started: “The group came into the square carrying a big picture of Belaid, with actors in white dresses that covered their bottom halves. They are all Fine Arts graduates,” he added, “and the play had taken months to produce. During the play actors smeared colors on themselves and their bodies and it also got on the square.”

“The group was started in August 2011,” al-Jelassi notes, “and it aims to spread the culture of resistance through art, in a non-traditional way, by doing things like occupying public squares and putting on works there.”  

Local man Riyad al-Sharishi, who’s also a civil society activist affiliated with the group, describes what happened next. “We were attacked by individuals affiliated with the Salafist movement. They surrounded us, tore our signs and damaged the picture of Belaid we were carrying. They were armed with sticks and knives and swords and we were forced to hide inside the damaged theatre. There were only 19 of us and there dozens of them,” al-Sharishi says.

The members of the theatre group called the police and officers came to find them. The actors, who included 15 men and four women, were then taken to a nearby police station in order to protect them. “However at that stage the tables turned,” al-Sharishi explains, as the actors were then arrested for public indecency.

“One moment we were victims,” says Saif Shida, a member of the group, “and the next we were being treated very contemptuously. The police insulted us and spoke to us rudely as we were being taken to the police station.”

The group’s members were then interrogated for several hours and only released early on Sunday morning.

After the incident, social networking websites run by civil society activists were buzzing with the news. Many activists suggested that the arrest of the street theatre group was another blow to the country’s cultural and societal freedoms. Some said that official move against the actors was meant to intimidate other Tunisian artists and others suggested that the Tunisian justice system was now punishing freedom of expression. Other groups organized marches in support of the group.

But when the group was questioned by the public prosecutor at El Kef’s court on Monday morning, they discovered that many of the charges against them were totally bogus, their lawyer said. The religious extremists had filed charges saying that the actors, including the women, had been completely naked and they also claimed that the artists had painted on nearby buildings and tried to throw paint on passers-by. The charges were clearly brought to try and infuriate the ordinary people of El Kef.  

The group denied all of these charges and the prosecutor eventually released them, al-Jelassi said. On the following Monday, it was decided that the investigation should commence so that it could be determined whether the religious extremists who had attacked the group might be at fault. The AllAfrica news organization reported the group’s lawyer saying that “the public prosecutor decided… to allow the investigation to progress so that police officers could hear the artists’ statements as victims.” This may mean the arrest of those who attacked them although it’s hard to say how likely this is.

Civil society activists now say that the group’s release is a victory. But, they add, there are still plenty of prisoners in Tunisian prisons because of the ideas they’ve had, things they’ve written about or art they’ve made.

While the Tunisian rapper Weld El 15 had his sentence for participating in a music video for the song “Cops Are Dogs” reduced to six months, pending an appeal, other Tunisians – like Amina Sboui, a Tunisian member of the women’s rights protest group, Femen, who scandalized the country in March by posting topless photos of herself and the blogger Ghazi Ben Mohamed Beji, who published writing seen as offensive to Islam – are still in prison.