It is hard to hear Anis Kanawi over the wailing of sirens from the ambulance standing in front of the Human Rights Association building. Emergency responders rush into the archive office to transport four of Kanawi’s colleagues to the hospital. Thirty-nine-year-old Kanawi is pale and his face is hallowed and he is unable to get up from his chair. He points towards the Tunisian flag draped over  his emaciated body, which has withered away during a hunger strike he and seven of his colleagues began on February 28.

It is hard to hear Anis Kanawi over the wailing of sirens from the ambulance standing in front of the Human Rights Association building. Emergency responders rush into the archive office to transport four of Kanawi’s colleagues to the hospital. Thirty-nine-year-old Kanawi is pale and his face is hallowed and he is unable to get up from his chair. He points towards the Tunisian flag draped over  his emaciated body, which has withered away during a hunger strike he and seven of his colleagues began on February 28. “In my will I wrote that I want the Tunisian flag to cover me on my last trip to my coffin. The Tunisian government refuses to negotiate with us or to take our demands seriously,” he said.

The group of eight activists started a hunger strike on behalf of 500,000 other young Tunisian men who hold university degrees, but haven’t been able to find jobs, either in the private or in the public sector.  The strikers are demanding their right to work. Some have been without jobs for more than 10 years and say they were the fuel of the Tunisian revolution that protested poverty and unemployment.

“We have chosen starvation and we do not want to succumb to the economic crises witnessed by the state that have not allowed us to be integrated in the labour market,” he said. “We are not responsible for the wrong choices and decisions taken by the successive governments since the fall of Ben Ali.”   

This year, Kanawi celebrated the 18th anniversary of his graduation from the University of Tunis and his professorship in industrial electronics. His mother congratulated him thinking his university education would guarantee him a good job in the public sector.  Twenty years later, they both realized this had merely been a myth.

“In one year, I will be 40 years old,” lamented Kanawi. “When will I start working and saving money to marry the girl I love, who refused to abandon me because I am unemployed?  My chances of getting married and having children are shrinking every day.”

Kanawi said he started seeing a psychiatrist ten years ago and has also been taking anti-depressants ever since.

Call us for what we are

Graduates of Tunisian universities refuse to be classified as unemployed people, they say, insisting instead on the term “muataleen” which means that they are forced to be unemployed, even though they are willing to join the labour market, but the authorities are unable to provide them with job opportunities.

They formed the Union for Unemployed Graduates (UDC) in 2006 to open new employment horizons in Tunisia but Ben Ali’s regime considered their union to be an outlawed organization. 

Things changed after the revolution in 2011, which gave them the opportunity to become legally registered and to be officially acknowledged in negotiations which aim at finding solutions to end the suffering of nearly half a million university graduates, according to figures released by the Tunisian Ministry of Employment. 

Kanawi believes that the recommendations of the first interim government since the revolution have opened up new horizons for the unemployed because the authorities decided to adopt the principle of seniority in graduation and social conditions for employment in government departments.

But giving priority to those who enjoy legislative amnesty (those who were imprisoned before the revolution— most of whom are Islamists— was a concession made by the troika government, led by the Islamic Ennahda Movement) was a turning point which aborted the dream of Kanawi and his fellow colleagues.  Six thousand people were given jobs in the Tunisian departments without tests to compensate them for the material and psychological damage they suffered as a result of detention and torture during the reigns of President Habib Bourguiba as well as the reign of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. In addition, there were another 3,000 Tunisians who also received jobs for being the wounded persons of the revolution.   

“These extraordinary measures have brought us back to point zero and forced us to fight new battles by different means, the latest is this hunger strike which we have initiated some weeks ago and which is endangering our lives.”

Support but no results

This hunger strike enjoys wide support from trade unions, human rights organizations, political parties and thousands of citizens who are taking turns in visiting the strikers to show their support and to raise the strikers’ morale.

Among them is musician Nibras Shammam: “The moral duty makes lawyers, human rights activists, and politicians adopt these legitimate demands. The right to employment is guaranteed by the new Constitution and the state has the duty to provide its people with sources of living.” 

Shammam said he was surprised by the silence of regional and central authorities regarding the demands of the strikers. “The fragile employment policy and the absence of clear strategies to end the unemployment crises in the country have made the strikers use their last weapon in confronting the government, although they know the risks.”

He worried that many of the strikers might die according to the reports issued by the medical committee tasked with the daily follow up on their health conditions. Health authorities have tried to persuade the strikers to quickly bring their strike to an end. “If one of the strikers die,” said Shammam, “His death will be the spark of a new popular uprising that could threaten the government of Habib Essid.”    

Kanawi remembered when the governor of Gabes Province visited the strikers on their first day and pledged to study their files, but he refused to set a timetable for the government to find them jobs.

 According to one of the regional officials, the authorities are able to provide these eight with jobs.  However, they are afraid that it they do so, other graduates will follow their footsteps and go on strikes and then authorities couldn’t guarantee jobs for all of them.

In the meantime, the economic crisis of Tunisia continues to worsen due to many factors such as the decline in investment, the trade deficit and hard currency earnings. The attack at the Bardo Museum on March 18 may also worsen the tourism sector and lead to even more unemployment.