Like most other Tunisian journalists, Safaa Mataallah was on Habib Bourguiba Avenue the morning of January 13, 2013 covering the annual revolutionary celebration that followed the fall of Ben Ali’s regime in 2011. The Leagues for the Protection of the Revolution (LPR) were also holding demonstrations and speeches on that day.
Like most other Tunisian journalists, Safaa Mataallah was on Habib Bourguiba Avenue the morning of January 13, 2013 covering the annual revolutionary celebration that followed the fall of Ben Ali’s regime in 2011. The Leagues for the Protection of the Revolution (LPR) were also holding demonstrations and speeches on that day.
Unexpected protests erupted when a group of young people gathered to denounce the government‘s refusal to acknowledge the victims of al-Radif mining basin uprising in Gafsa in 2008, as martyrs. Security interfered and formed a barrier separating protestors from LPR members.
Mataallah got caught up in the chaos and security ended up pushing Matallaah away from the center— she suddenly found herself amidst LPR members, who are notorious for attacking journalists.
As she prepared to videotape the events a man began asking her why she was there and what she was doing. Maraallah told him she was a journalist and when he saw her press ID hanging from her neck, and realized that she was employed by the leftist paper Sawt al-Shaab, he began insulting her, calling her a “whore and an atheist.”
Far from being the only one
Mataallah tried to stop him but he grew increasingly violent. He began beating her while she was holding on to her camera. “All this happened while the security men were present and watching, but they did nothing to stop him,” Mataallah said. “They suddenly left the place without doing anything to help me.”
Some of those present interfered and helped her get away from the man. She went to the nearest pharmacy to buy some painkillers because of the severe throbbing she felt in her ears, left arm, shoulder and her left leg.
Before this incident of harassment, tens of Maraallah’s fellow journalists and politicians had been attacked by LPR; including Mohammed Brahmi who had been beaten by militants before his assassination in July 2013 and Lotfi Naguedh, the regional coordinator for the opposition Nidaa Tounes party, who died on October 18, 2012 after the violent attack on him by LPR in the Tataouine Province.
The farce is over
“Today, everybody breathed a sigh of relief and felt safe when the Court of First Instance in Tunis decided to dissolve the National Leagues for the Protection of Revolution (LPR) and all of its branches,“ she said on May 26, 2014.
“The LPR had become a tool of repression and a parallel authority to the state authority instead of being a civil active association. It committed numerous violations against the different components of civil society, journalists and political parties and it has been serving the interests of a specific party (insinuating that it was serving the interests of the Ennahda Movement), contrary to the real intents of its name.”
MP Mongi Rahoui, of the Popular Front, said this decision came because the government, headed by Mehdi Jumaa, had committed to dissolving the LPR before it took on its duties. “Jumaa has put an end to a protracted farce which allowed this militia to become active and justified its violations.”
“This decision does justice to the victims of these militias and it condemns political parties that have provided LPR with political and legal cover to serve their ends in terrorizing the rival democratic forces in Tunisia.”
The centrist Republican Party, which claims that it is one of the victims of LPRs, welcomed the decision taken by the court on May 26, 2014 and stressed in a statement issued by the party that ” since more than two years, all democratic and national forces have been demanding the dissolution of the LPR because of the danger they pose on the democratic transition and the transitional phase in Tunisia.”
A void decision
Members of LPR and its president Mounir Ajroud called the decision a „betrayal of the revolution.”
In an interview with Correspondents, Mounir Ajroud, said that this decision is not supported by evidences and there are complicit parties behind the dissolution decision.”
Ajroud denied charges against LPR members accused of committing violent acts. “These accusations are fabricated in the context of the attack on the association in order to dissolve it. All other violations and crimes committed by other associations and political parties such as the burning of parties’ headquarters and unjustified protests which bedeviled the Tunisian economy went unpunished.”
The head of LPR, which is commonly described as a militia, stressed that the court’s decision will be appealed and that his organization might even file a complaint with the international Tribunal.
The return of political trials?
Noureddine Alchteroshi, the head of the Construction of the Maghreb, a centrist union, told Correspondents: “The dissolution of LPR was expected and we recommended dissolving it before the assassination of Brahmi.”
Alchteroshi believes the dissolution could be interpreted as the return of political trials. “I believe that the LPR should make an in-depth assessment of its experience, acknowledge that it made mistakes and learn the lessons in order to better organize its work and not place itself as the guardian of the revolution.”
