Tunisian Unionists on Strike in Kasserine Province

[UGTT union federation executive member Mohamed Saghaier Saihi. Image from menasolidaritynetwork.com] [UGTT union federation executive member Mohamed Saghaier Saihi. Image from menasolidaritynetwork.com]

Tunisian Unionists on Strike in Kasserine Province

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was issued by Mohamed Sghaier Saihi, a UGTT union federation executive member in Kasserine province, Tunisia, via MENA Solidarity Network on 21 October 2012.]  

Tunisia has seen waves of strikes and protests against the policies of the Islamist Ennahdha Party in recent months. In the Kasserine region, for example we saw general strikes in Majel Bel Abbès two months ago, in Thala three weeks ago, in Laayoun two weeks ago, in Sbiba last Tuesday and in Hassi Frid last week. There are almost every week demonstrations  and sit-ins in Kasserine and different local areas.

The strikes are co-ordinated by leaders of the UGTT trade union federation. I am general secretary of the regional secondary school teachers’ union, which is affiliated to the UGTT, and a member of the regional executive committee of the UGTT in Kasserine province. The UGTT has 19000 members in the region across different economic sectors, and every four years they elect a nine-member regional executive which in turn elects a general secretary. Almost all of the 4000 teachers across 65 schools (preparatory schools and secondary schools) are members of the UGTT.

The UGTT played a critical role in the 2011 revolution. We led all the demonstrations, distributed the leaflets, proposed the chants and organised the mobilising meetings for the masses at which we encouraged them to stand firm. We denounced the fraud and corruption of the old regime. We were the vanguard of the revolutionary process which began long before 26 December 2010, and which put an end to one of the most repressive dictatorships.

Now we are leading the struggle again. We believe that the revolution is a long way from being achieved, and we are continuing our battle for a genuine democratic transition. We want to stop our country from returning to dictatorship, this time a more totalitarian, religious dictatorship. The progressive gains we have made must be safeguarded and consolidated. We believe that the current government cannot meet the needs of the revolution, because its religious doctrine is contrary to the principles of democracy. Ennahdha is a liberal Islamist party, supported by the White House, and its peformance during its first term in office has been terrible.

Today, the strikes across our region are demanding employment for the jobless and regional development. They have also called on the government to bring the snipers who shot protesters during the revolution to trial and to provide medical care for the wounded of the revolution and compensation for the martyrs’ families. Kasserine’s rate of unemployment is 30%, compared to a national rate of 14%. During the rule of Bourguiba and Ben Ali, Kasserine, as well as many other regions of the interior, was totally neglected. The inhabitants feel frustrated and are claiming their rights as they were the main revolutionary force which deposed the dictator.

All groups of workers and all citizens took part in the strikes. Civil society associations also brought their help. During the last general strike in Sbiba (a town 50 miles from Kasserine) all the inhabitants organized a demonstration .They chanted slogans against the Ennahdha-led government accusing them of inability to solve the problems of the country such as unemployment, lack of security, and of attempting to dominate the institutions of the state.

Trade unionists in Kasserine are co-ordinating with neighbouring areas such as Gafsa and Sidi Bouzid to make common plans for the next few months before the elections. What we fear most is that that Ennahdha will win the elections and we feel that would be a catastrophe. We would want to convince our members not to vote for Ennahdha.

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412