Just over ten years ago, at dawn on 7 November 1987, General Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali deposed Habib Bourguiba and took over the reins of power. In his very first address, Tunisia’s new head of state announced his intention of respecting the rights women had acquired and the Code on the Status of the Individual (CSP) which the former president had promulgated in 1957.
Two years later, the Tunisian Democratic Women’s Association (1) was legalised. In 1993 a number of reforms were made to the status of women. For instance, it was decided to delegate some guardianship prerogatives to a mother who has care of the children; to make the mother the guardian in the event of the death or incapacity of the father; to grant majority to a married minor; to abolish the wife’s duty to obey and introduce a mutual obligation of respect and consultation between spouses (2). A pension and alimony fund was also set up to provide for divorced women and their children who were in need as a result of the irresponsibility of a divorced husband. Women’s right to work was strengthened. And wage discrimination in the agricultural sector was legally abolished.
With the reform of the penal code, a husband who murdered his adulterous wife caught in flagrante delicto could no longer plead attenuating circumstances. And, under the nationality code, a Tunisian mother could now transmit her nationality to a child born abroad of a foreign father - provided, of course, the husband agreed.
In April 1996 the Council of Ministers adopted further measures to “strengthen the social role of the family”, including awarding child allowances to a mother who has care of the children. In August 1997 a final range of measures provided, where appropriate, for legal assistance for women in greatest need.
Although this body of reforms represented some progress towards equality of the sexes, the legislators were still shackled by the traditions and customs that confine women to their traditional role of submissive wife and mother. Dowries are still required. The father remains the sole head of the family. Inheritance is still governed by Islamic law, which allocates two thirds to the man and one third to the woman. A woman may not pass on her nationality without the agreement of a man, even if he is a foreigner. The situation of a single mother with an illegitimate child is still quite simply ignored by the law.
Judging by appearances, the status of Tunisian women - the right of association, access to work, access to family planning and relative equality under the law - seems enviable especially in comparison with other Muslim countries. But women’s achievements since 1992 have not come out of the blue (3). The real legal watershed dates from 13 August 1957, the day the new Code on the Status of the Individual abolished polygamy and repudiation of a wife. Some people believe that this was President Bourguiba’s way of trying to rally the forces of modernism to his side. Others think that this victory was won mainly by the women who fought against the injustice inflicted on them.
Whatever the truth, 35 years after the promulgation of a code which affected the lives of the post-independence generations, President Ben Ali could hardly set back the clock. Since he had no historical legitimacy other than having rid the people of an impotent president, it was only logical for him to affirm his respect for women’s rights and human rights. Yet all the hymns in praise of the sana at-tahawwil (artisan of change) conceal the role played by Tunisian women and the mobilisation of feminists, from the Tahar Haddad Club (4) to the committee of inquiry into the situation of working women in the General Tunisian Workers’ Union, the Association of Democratic Women or the Tunisian Human Rights League’s Committee for the Defence of Women’s Rights.
All these movements created autonomous forums for discussion to ensure that the women’s question was not forgotten. To explain the government’s almost obsessive interest in Tunisian women’s rights, it is important to look back to the political polarisation following the general elections of 2 April 1989. Mr Ben Ali, the only candidate on the list, obtained 99.27% of votes in the presidential election. But at the legislative elections, the “independent” lists (known as “violet”) supported by the Islamists of the Mouvement de la tendance islamique (MTI), which was not recognised, carried 14% of votes. This score persuaded the government to change direction: no further dialogue with the MTI.
Next on the agenda was to organise a national consensus against Islamism using as ideological tools the two linchpins of the official platform: human rights and women’s rights. In the name of human rights, the “enemies of democracy” (the Islamists) must be removed from the political stage. So women’s rights were used as an alibi. The regime set itself up as the defender of civil society and women against Islamic fundamentalism, with a leitmotif of “No democracy for the enemies of democracy”.
The regime gave cheap pledges: it boasted of the measures adopted in 1992 in favour of women, but made no concessions on democracy or freedom of expression - as though the women’s cause “justified” repression against the MTI. Nonetheless, the approach proved effective: the opposition became divided, and many repeated the government’s arguments.
The Gulf War of 1990-91 was a major turning point. By deciding to take a neutral stand, President Ben Ali was able to channel the support for Iraq and gain a certain credibility (5). The Islamists could not make up their minds, split between support for Saddam Hussein and loyalty to the Saudi providers of funds, and this lost them credit. The head of state was quick to exploit the situation, spurred on by the Islamic Salvation Front’s victory in Algeria in 1991. At that point, the machinery of the police went into overdrive, targeting first the Islamists, then any form of opposition.
Since then, according to Amnesty International, the gap continues to widen “between the discourse of the Tunisian authorities, who continue to reiterate their commitment to respecting human rights, and a reality where the most fundamental rights are violated daily” (6). Yesterday’s promises are proving false. Democracy, pluralism, freedom of association, freedom of expression, the physical integrity of the individual, all are just illusions directed at the international community. And so are women’s rights. Because if you are an Islamist, it is a different matter.
It is difficult to evaluate the exact number of Tunisian women
suffering from repression. Living in terror, many of them are afraid
or ashamed - of testifying. Amnesty International estimates that
there are several thousand such women. What they nearly all have in
common is that they are Islamists or related to Islamists and
considered, by that token, to hold valuable information and be a
useful means of putting pressure on the prisoners and exiles.
Sometimes they are persecuted simply for having contacted certain
humanitarian groups to inform them of the arrest or detention of
friends or relatives.
Day after day, they are subjected to loss of freedom, constant control and surveillance, house arrest, arbitrary detention and so forth. This set of non-judicial measures is accompanied by an equally long catalogue of repeated humiliations. Many of these women are quite literally harassed. For instance, Jalila Jalleti (7), the wife of an Islamist exile, has to report to the police station five times a day. Any travel within the country is considered suspect. In 1997 Rashida Ben Salem, wife of a political exile tried in absentia, was sentenced to a two year three months prison term after being arrested near the Libyan border.
Being put under house arrest or forced to return again and again to the police station or harassed in other ways stops some of these women from working - especially if they are already exhausted by the even heavier burden of responsibilities when they have become the head of the household. Worse still, anyone who tries to help them financially risks up to ten years in prison for financing a political party and “unauthorised collection of funds”. Aisha Dhawadi, wife of a political exile in Europe, got a sentence of two years and three months on that charge. According to Hélène Jaffé, head of the Association for the Victims of Repression in Exile (8), “this has reduced whole families to begging”.
Since the Tunisian police began to hound the wives of Islamists who had fled, the hitherto unknown practice of driving women to divorce has gained ground in Tunisia. Kheria Shahbania, wife of an exile, is an eloquent case in point. Harassed for more than two years, summoned several times to the Medenine police station (in the south of the country), she continued to stand up to her persecutors. But Aisha Ben Mansur, wife of an opponent who took refuge in New Zealand, was so terrified that she eventually gave in. But that was not the end of her troubles: she is still without a passport and a telephone.
Torture and sexual abuse are also rife. According to an Amnesty International official in London, the sexual abuse of women is widespread. The first recorded case, in 1992, was Widad Lagha, wife of Ali Larayedh, the spokesman for the MTI sentenced to 15 years in prison. Undressing women at police stations is also fairly common. Another innovation is the use of pornography against members of the opposition. Since the early 1990s, fake video cassettes have been circulating that purport to show Islamist political figures (Ali Larayedh and Abdel Fatah Muru) and Mr Bourguiba’s ex-prime minister (Muhammad Mzali). Widad Larayedh was not spared either. She was undressed and filmed in the nude to put pressure on her husband.
Far from opposing these degrading practices, sections of the press aid and abet them. One of the most scandalous cases is that of Radhia Awididi. In its January 1997 issue, the weekly magazine Réalités decided it was its duty to describe in flowery terms how this young girl supposedly lost her virginity (9); she was arrested in November 1996 as she was preparing to leave the country, worn out by the persecution she had suffered ever since her Islamist fiancé fled abroad in 1992.
Where women could not be made to give in, their children have been targeted. Mrs Jaffé describes specific cases of “children summoned to the police station, where even little girls of 10-12 years old were threatened with rape”. More mature women did not get any greater respect. Sixty-five year-old Ghazala Hannashi died of the violence she underwent during a police search in her home in Jenduba in September 1997 (10). She was the mother of an Islamist hunted by the police. The murderers are still free.
The relatives of Islamists are not the only victims of the repression. Secular and democratic women who refuse to be blackmailed into fighting Islamism are at risk. Radhia Nasrawi, a defence lawyer at all the political trials, has just been summoned before the examining judge of Tunisia to answer eleven charges, including “membership of a terrorist organisation”. This carries a sentence of over 20 years. Her office has been ransacked on several occasions and, finally, all her files and material were stolen outright on 12 February 1998. Sihem Ben Sedrine, the member of the Tunisian Human Rights League responsible for monitoring families who are the victims of repression, is, like her husband, the target of open persecution. She, too, was shown an album of pornographic material featuring herself, which was circulated widely in Tunisia.
So the situation of thousands of women is rather different from the way it is described in some of the press, both in Tunisian and in France. The title of an article that appeared early this year in a Parisian weekly, “Tunisian Women, Guardians of Democracy” (11), shows the ignorance - or complicity - that prevails in France.
