Amina is in prison: The political underside
By Nadia El Fani et Caroline Fourest
[Nadia El Fani is a Tunisian documentary film maker now in exile in Paris. Caroline Fourest is a French feminist who has written widely on fundamentalism and recently came under attack for her support of gay marriage.]
http://www.marianne.net/Amina-en-prison-Les-dessous-d-un-acte-politique_a229012.html
Amina, otherwise known as the "Tunisian FEMEN," was arrested on May 19. The trial promises to be very political. On May 21, she appeared before the High Court of Kairouan [a town in central Tunisia, also called Al-Qayrawan, site of an historic mosque and a holy city for Islamists]. The prosecutor gave a press conference to announce the charges against her: “desecrating a cemetery” and “offenses against modesty.” She could be held for as long as 14 months while awaiting trial and faces up to two years in prison. The charges are totally ludicrous in light of her action: a simple graffiti tag on a wall less than a foot high.
By Nadia El Fani et Caroline Fourest
[Nadia El Fani is a Tunisian documentary film maker now in exile in Paris. Caroline Fourest is a French feminist who has written widely on fundamentalism and recently came under attack for her support of gay marriage.]
http://www.marianne.net/Amina-en-prison-Les-dessous-d-un-acte-politique_a229012.html
Amina, otherwise known as the "Tunisian FEMEN," was arrested on May 19. The trial promises to be very political. On May 21, she appeared before the High Court of Kairouan [a town in central Tunisia, also called Al-Qayrawan, site of an historic mosque and a holy city for Islamists]. The prosecutor gave a press conference to announce the charges against her: “desecrating a cemetery” and “offenses against modesty.” She could be held for as long as 14 months while awaiting trial and faces up to two years in prison. The charges are totally ludicrous in light of her action: a simple graffiti tag on a wall less than a foot high.
This wall, probably constructed by the city of Kairouan, surrounds the cemetery adjoined to the mosque. It can easily be cleaned. Amina simply spray painted the word FEMEN, the name of her feminist group, in order to thumb her nose at a government that is trying to prohibit the movement and especially to confront, in her own way, the 40,000 Salafis who threatened to meet in the city illegally. Late last Sunday morning, May 19, 2013, furious residents recognized Amina and nearly lynched her. The police immediately arrested her in the presence of Tunisian and foreign journalists. She called us from the police station to tell us what she had come to do and to warn us of her arrest.
We have been in contact with Amina since she fled her family home, where, how shall we say it, even though she is of age, they had imprisoned her and spent three weeks trying to re-educate her with anti-depressant medications and required reading of the Koran. And what was her crime? She had posted a topless picture of herself on Facebook to affirm her membership in FEMEN.
At the time, the Salafis said she deserved stoning. An international campaign of solidarity with Amina was then launched to claim her right to freedom. Since her escape, Nadia El Fani has spoken to her almost every day, partly to coordinate the conditions of her travel to France. Amina wanted to come to France to resume her studies and pass her Baccalaureate.
Worried about her security and her future, we launched a call for donations (which raised $5200 on the Internet) to cover at least part of the costs to come, including her ticket and finding her a home. An organization was charged with getting her a scholarship and a school placement. Amina recently contacted the French Embassy for a visa. Everything was ready— except her new passport.
The Tunisian Ministry of the Interior, looking for a way to keep her there, pretended there was an error he had to correct. She waited ten days, ten long days, when everyone was worried about her and she herself felt it was time to leave. Before her arrest, Amina spoke constantly about doing a last action before leaving Tunisia. She has never ceased to defy fundamentalism and its accomplices. On May 1 she didn’t hestitate to act alone and disrupt a public meeting of the CPR Party (the party of Moncef Marzouki, “provisional” President of the Republic) and heckle Sihem Badi, its Minister for Women's Rights, in the middle of downtown Tunis on the Avenue Habib Bourguiba. When the police tried to stop her that day, a crowd of demonstrators demanded her immediate release so she was released.
From the beginning her determination has been indomitable and her rebellion against what is happening in Tunisia inexhaustible. It is characteristic of young people to believe they have the power to change things, as it was during the revolution. Can we blame them? What's not to admire about this? All we could do was to try in our own way to prepare everything to protect her and count the days.
Suffice to say that we pressed Amina to come as soon as we read the bold announcement on her Facebook page that she intended to go to Kairouan to defy Ansar al Sharia at their conference, no less! The Tunisian press picked up the story and presented it without seeming to be offended. This had a surprising effect. Suddenly, the government announced that it would not issue a permit for the rally. That day, Amina both reassured us and fooled us: she had no need to go to Kairouna since the conference was canceled!
[Ansar al-Sharia, the most militant of the Tunisian Salafi groups, had called a national conference in Kairoun on May 19; when the government banned the meeting, they moved it to a suburb of Tunis, where they fought the police and some were arrested. According to the Beirut paper al-Akhbar, “The government has hardened its position towards Islamist extremists in recent months, after the moderate Islamist party al-Nahda was strongly criticized for being too lenient and failing to prevent a wave of violence around the country.”].. read more:
We have been in contact with Amina since she fled her family home, where, how shall we say it, even though she is of age, they had imprisoned her and spent three weeks trying to re-educate her with anti-depressant medications and required reading of the Koran. And what was her crime? She had posted a topless picture of herself on Facebook to affirm her membership in FEMEN.
At the time, the Salafis said she deserved stoning. An international campaign of solidarity with Amina was then launched to claim her right to freedom. Since her escape, Nadia El Fani has spoken to her almost every day, partly to coordinate the conditions of her travel to France. Amina wanted to come to France to resume her studies and pass her Baccalaureate.
Worried about her security and her future, we launched a call for donations (which raised $5200 on the Internet) to cover at least part of the costs to come, including her ticket and finding her a home. An organization was charged with getting her a scholarship and a school placement. Amina recently contacted the French Embassy for a visa. Everything was ready— except her new passport.
The Tunisian Ministry of the Interior, looking for a way to keep her there, pretended there was an error he had to correct. She waited ten days, ten long days, when everyone was worried about her and she herself felt it was time to leave. Before her arrest, Amina spoke constantly about doing a last action before leaving Tunisia. She has never ceased to defy fundamentalism and its accomplices. On May 1 she didn’t hestitate to act alone and disrupt a public meeting of the CPR Party (the party of Moncef Marzouki, “provisional” President of the Republic) and heckle Sihem Badi, its Minister for Women's Rights, in the middle of downtown Tunis on the Avenue Habib Bourguiba. When the police tried to stop her that day, a crowd of demonstrators demanded her immediate release so she was released.
From the beginning her determination has been indomitable and her rebellion against what is happening in Tunisia inexhaustible. It is characteristic of young people to believe they have the power to change things, as it was during the revolution. Can we blame them? What's not to admire about this? All we could do was to try in our own way to prepare everything to protect her and count the days.
Suffice to say that we pressed Amina to come as soon as we read the bold announcement on her Facebook page that she intended to go to Kairouan to defy Ansar al Sharia at their conference, no less! The Tunisian press picked up the story and presented it without seeming to be offended. This had a surprising effect. Suddenly, the government announced that it would not issue a permit for the rally. That day, Amina both reassured us and fooled us: she had no need to go to Kairouna since the conference was canceled!
[Ansar al-Sharia, the most militant of the Tunisian Salafi groups, had called a national conference in Kairoun on May 19; when the government banned the meeting, they moved it to a suburb of Tunis, where they fought the police and some were arrested. According to the Beirut paper al-Akhbar, “The government has hardened its position towards Islamist extremists in recent months, after the moderate Islamist party al-Nahda was strongly criticized for being too lenient and failing to prevent a wave of violence around the country.”].. read more:
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