Tunisia: Post-Bardo, Anti-Rights Rhetoric in Tunisia

press release

"Madame, I hope you will now stop defending the human rights of terrorists." This comment on my facebook page does indeed reflect the thinking of some Tunisians in the aftermath of the murderous attacks at the Bardo Museum. The same view is being hammered with unprecedented relentlessness in the media.

An avalanche of statements from senior officials, intellectuals, and police union members has poured forth with the same message. Education Minister Néji Jalloul declared on an independent TV station that "Terrorists don't respect human rights, so we shouldn't respect theirs." An editorial writer for the daily paper Le Temps lashed out at "Moralistic defenders of human rights, in their Sunday best, cozily ensconced in their vast ivory towers."

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