Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-06-14-Speech-3-199"
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"en.20000614.8.3-199"2
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"Mr President, we have had to wait until the end of this parliamentary term for the truth to finally break out in the European Parliament.
Having returned from a mission to Tunisia with three of my colleagues, I shall talk about the problems of union freedom. The great wave of repression that has swept over the opposition of all political hues since the 1990s has allowed the government to seize control of the General Union of Tunisian Workers, the GUTW. Arrests, sackings of union leaders, threats and pressure of all kinds have combined with the authoritarianism of the union hierarchy in order to subdue one of the most combative labour organisations in the region.
The extremely severe legal restrictions on the right to strike have been made even harsher by the current leadership. For a strike to be legal in Tunisia, the executive of the GUTW now has to give its approval. Meetings, which cannot normally be held in the workplace, are also regularly banned on union premises. Union leaders have been stripped of their powers and taken to court for having criticised the management of the trade union group in a simple internal petition. 12 of them were arrested by the police in April 1999 and spent more than 48 hours at the Ministry for Internal Affairs for having questioned the irregular conditions in which the GUTW congress took place. Amongst these, we wish to mention Abdeljalil Bedoui, Ali Romdhane, Abdelmajid Sahraoui, Abdennour Maddahi, Hamed Bennjima, Noureddine Ounissa, Chaker Ben Hassine, and many others.
Ben Ali’s regime is exercising tight control over the whole world of labour. The repression is not only aimed at political opponents. It affects the whole of the population, particularly in working class neighbourhoods, and the small towns and villages in the underprivileged regions. The report by the National Council for Liberties in Tunisia estimates the number of policemen at 130 000 for a population of 9.5 million inhabitants. To this figure we should add the unofficial policemen controlled by the network of neighbourhood committees, reporting directly to the Ministry of the Interior, which monitors and subdues a defenceless population. These facts give us a better understanding of this pseudo-democracy, in which the President wins the elections with 99.44% of the vote.
Mr President, let the Tunisian people, who are represented here by two of their number, know that we support them in their fight for freedom and that we will not desert them."@en1
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