Al Jazeera Discovers Tunisian Crackdown Is, In Fact, A Crackdown
When Ayachi Hammami is arrested and sentenced to five years for criticizing state officials, Al Jazeera describes it as a continued 'crackdown.' Yes, it is . However, few mainstream reports contextualize this with President Kais Saied's 2021 power grab—a move met with a shrug, or even tacit approval, from Western 'democracies' that once lauded Tunisia as the Arab Spring's success story. The Biden
administration, which claims to champion democracy, issued weak condemnations when Saied suspended parliament and rewrote the constitution, effectively dismantling a decade of democratic gains. One might wonder if the concern for 'democracy' only materializes when a leader stops being 'our guy,' or when the 'crackdown' narrative becomes too blatant to ignore. It appears the international
community's outrage scale has a rather selective calibration, particularly when it comes to strategically important regions like North Africa. Perhaps Hammami's arrest is simply the logical conclusion of a project that was allowed to fester, uncorrected, by the very powers that once promised to protect Tunisia's fledgling freedoms.