Arab Spring

Prominent members of Tunisia’s political opposition have announced they will be joining a collective hunger strike in solidarity with jailed politician Jawhar Ben Mbarek, whose health they say has severely deteriorated after nine days without food.

Ben Mbarek, the cofounder of Tunisia’s main opposition alliance, the National Salvation Front, launched a hunger strike last week to protest his detention since February 2023.

Ben Mbarek’s father, veteran activist Ezzeddine Hazgui, said during a news conference in the capital Tunis on Friday that his son is in a “worrisome condition, and his health is deteriorating”.

Hazgui said his family would launch a hunger strike in solidarity with his jailed son.

“We will not forgive [Tunisian President] Kais Saied,” he added.

The leaders of Tunisia’s major opposition parties also declared on Friday that they would go on hunger strike in solidarity with Ben Mbarek.

Among them is Issam Chebbi, the leader of the centrist Al Joumhouri (Republican) Party, who is also behind bars after being convicted in the same mass trial as Ben Mbarek earlier this year. Wissam Sghaier, another Al Joumhouri leader, said some party members would follow suit.

Rached Ghannouchi, the 84-year-old leader of the Ennahdha party, who is also serving a hefty prison sentence, announced he was joining the hunger protest.

Ghannouchi was convicted in July of “conspiring against state security”, adding to previous convictions, including money laundering, for which he has been sentenced to more than 20 years in prison and for which he claims innocence.

A post on his official Facebook page said Ghannouchi’s hunger strike sought to support Ben Mbarek, but he was also taking a stand to defend “the independence of justice and freedom in the country”.

Ben Mbarek was sentenced in April to 18 years behind bars on charges of “conspiracy against state security” and “belonging to a terrorist group”, in a mass trial slammed by human rights groups as politically motivated.

Rights groups have warned of a sharp decline in civil liberties in the North African country since Saied won the presidency in 2019.

A sweeping power grab in July 2021, when he dissolved parliament and expanded executive power so he could rule by decree, saw Saied jail many of his critics. That decree was later enshrined in a new constitution – ratified by a widely boycotted 2022 referendum – while media figures and lawyers critical of Saied have also been prosecuted and detained under a harsh “fake news” law enacted the same year.

Most recently, lawyer and outspoken Saied critic Ahmed Souab was sentenced to five years in prison on October 31 under Decree Law 54, as the legislation is known.

The Tunisian League for Human Rights said there have been “numerous attempts” to persuade Ben Mbarek to suspend his hunger strike, but he has refused, saying he is “committed to maintain it until the injustice inflicted upon him is lifted”.

Prison authorities denied on Wednesday that the health of any of its prisoners had deteriorated because of a hunger strike.

The Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK said questions have been raised regarding the prison administration’s compliance with laws governing medical care for detainees on hunger strike and the “safeguarding of their right to physical safety and human dignity”.

“Tunisian law explicitly stipulates the state’s responsibility to protect the life of any prisoner, even if that person chooses hunger strike as a form of protest,” the rights group said in a statement on Friday.

“The prison administration is therefore obliged to ensure appropriate medical care and regular monitoring,” it said, adding that Ben Mbarek’s protest reflects “a broader climate of political and social tension that transcends his personal situation”.

“His action represents a form of protest against detention conditions and judicial processes that many view as influenced by current political polarisation,” the group said.

“Ultimately, the case of Jawhar Ben Mbarek exposes a deeper crisis concerning respect for the rule of law and the principle of accountability,” it added.

يواصل أستاذ القانون الدستوري جوهر بن مبارك إضرابه المفتوح عن الطعام في محبسه منذ 29 أكتوبر الماضي داخل السجن المدني ببلي (ولاية نابل)، احتجاجاً على اعتقاله فيما يُعرف بقضية “التآمر على أمن الدولة”.

وتظهر المعطيات المتوفرة أن الحالة الصحية لبن مبارك تزداد هشاشة مع استمرار… pic.twitter.com/HrHwe14juE

— المنظمة العربية لحقوق الإنسان (@AohrUk_ar) November 7, 2025

Translation: Constitutional law professor Jawhar Ben Mbarek continues his open-ended hunger strike in his place of detention since October 29 inside the civil prison of Belli (Nabeul Governorate), in protest against his arrest in what is known as the “conspiracy against state security” case.

Available data show that Ben Mbarek’s health condition is becoming increasingly fragile with the continued complete abstention from food, which places his physical state in a critical phase requiring precise and constant medical monitoring.

Tunisia’s General Labour Union (UGTT) is poised to take on President Kais Saied in a protest scheduled for August 21.

The union called for a protest against what it says are government attempts to undermine workers’ rights, and the use of intimidation to curb strikes, referring to a three-day UGTT transport strike at the end of July.

Since he seized power on July 25, 2021, Saied has radically undermined the role of parliament and political parties while granting himself vastly increased powers through a constitution revised according to his edicts.

Yet the UGTT’s ability to mobilise its hundreds of thousands of members stands as one of the few remaining counters to Saied, analysts say.

“The UGTT has always been more than just a trade union,” Hamza Meddeb of the Carnegie Institute, who has written extensively on the organisation, told Al Jazeera.

“It was established even before Tunisian independence, and played a significant role in achieving that,” he said of Tunisia’s liberation from France in 1956.

“Since then, it’s played both an economic role … as well as a political role, such as in 2015, when it was the principal force behind establishing the National Dialogue,” Meddeb continued, referring to a political crisis when the UGTT and three other civil society organisations helped prevent the collapse of Tunisia’s post-revolutionary democracy.

Inevitable confrontation

Matters reached a head between UGTT and Saied on August 7 when hundreds of Saied’s supporters rallied outside UGTT headquarters, accusing it of “corruption” and “squandering people’s money” after a three-day transport strike in late July paralysed much of the country.

The following night, Saied defended the anti-union protesters, repeating their calls for union “accountability” and stressing that, contrary to claims from both the UGTT and rights groups, his supporters had not intended violence.

“There are files that must be opened because the people are demanding accountability … so that their money can be returned to them,” Saied said in a video posted on the presidency’s official Facebook page.

Further confrontations between the president and the union were inevitable, but many analysts point to what they say is a union weakened by internal schisms and the threat to its decades-long monopoly on union power in Tunisia.

“For the past two years, the UGTT has been silent, certainly on the political side of things,” a political analyst who remained in Tunisia told Al Jazeera, on condition of anonymity.

“Saied even revised the labour code without consulting them,” they said of the May decision to change laws that affected many of UGTT’s members.

“Previously, making a decision on that scale without the UGTT would have been inconceivable,” he said.

A weakened union

Much of the UGTT’s relatively low profile lies in an internal rupture, prompted by its decision in 2021 to extend its board’s mandate from two to three terms, which is said to have splintered the union’s membership and undermined it.

“There are many in the UGTT who see the 2021 decision as a coup d’etat of the union’s own, which has really weakened the board’s decision to do anything,” Meddeb said.

“You also can’t avoid the fact that the financial situation across the country is getting much, much worse, which means that the core membership of the union – the state-dependent middle class – are also suffering, and are blaming a board they already have little faith in for that, too.

“So, when Saied calls it a ‘corrupt union’ … that makes sense to much of its membership,” Meddeb said.

“It’s also easy, [given its long history and close relationships with all of Tunisia’s past governments] for Saied to paint it as part of the country’s elite that has been holding its people back,” he concluded.

A rival union emerges

Moves to undermine the UGTT’s base are already under way.

On Monday, the government announced it would halt the longstanding practice of allowing union officials to receive their government salaries while on union business, with more such moves expected.

Saied is also said to be encouraging the rival Union of Tunisian Workers (UTT), which analysts such as author Hatem Nafti say could try to take advantage of any weakening of the bond between the UGTT and its membership, to boost its standing.

How successful that would be in light of the UTT leadership’s previous convictions on corruption charges, remained to be seen, he added.

That the UTT is ready to step into any breach left by the UGTT was clear last week, when it issued a statement accusing its rivals of what it said was the “defamation” of the president.

Nafti said that the government might also seek to halt the practice of deducting UGTT membership fees from state employees’ salaries at source before transferring the funds to the union, which would give UTT more hope of winning members away from UGTT.

“That Kais Saied would move against the UGTT was written from day one,” Nafti told Al Jazeera from Paris, where he now lives.

“Populism doesn’t allow any mediator between the leader and the people, so firstly, he got rid of rival political parties, then civil society and the media.

“Even the television networks that support him don’t show political programmes any more,” he said.

“The UGTT was the logical next step.”