Tunisia Update

[the_future_modernes]

Art challenges Tunisian revolutionaries The Artocracy project, featuring photos of ordinary Tunisians, has proven art can be just as provocative as politics.

LE KRAM, TUNISIA — A crowd has gathered to ponder the black-and-white photographs which have been pasted across the face of building that was, until recent, the local offices of the former president's much-loathed party. "I have no idea what these photos mean. Do you know?" Meddeb Nejeb, a high school teacher, asks Al Jazeera. He might be yet to grasp the meaning of the photographs, but Nejeb wants to know more. For the artists behind what is one of the most ambitious contemporary street art projects to vibrate the Arab world, the artwork is about replacing the once all-pervasive presidential photography with mosaics of ordinary, anonymous Tunisians who rose up against their government. The group are using street art to kick-start conversations and to challenge their compatriots to see the familiar in a new, post-revolutionary, light. In the spirit of people-power, the project, titled "INSIDE OUT: Artocracy in Tunisia", features a hundred ordinary Tunisians, putting their images where only presidents once hung. The portraits were taken by six Tunisian photographers, in collaboration with the renowned French street artist known as JR and other international artists. MORE including VIDEO at link

Visiting Tunisian Union Leaders Detail Labor’s Role in Revolution, Transition to Democracy

Women workers comprise roughly 43 percent of the 450,000 labor union members in 18 local unions in Tunisia, according to Najoua Makhlouf, a medical doctor and president of UGTT's national women's committee. Union women work in five Tunisian job sectors: education, garment and textiles, health, municipal services and tourism. The majority of the women unionists are between the ages of 30 to 40. “I would like to underline working women’s role,” she said, “in the future of the country. We are being proactive to organize women so that they will be more aware of their rights and politically savvy.” A pivotal election for Tunisians is July 24, when they vote for a representative body to draft a new constitution, laws and election codes. MORE

Refugee flow into Tunisia continues

RAS JDIR, Tunisia, March 25 (UPI) -- The number of refugees fleeing to Tunisia to escape the Libyan fighting surged Friday, border authorities said. Within the past 24 hours, as many as 1,145 people reached the border post at Ras Jdir, Tunisia, the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA reported. Border security sources said Friday 3,714 people had arrived in recent days, mostly Libyans but also Americans, four Germans and four Britons. Citizens of Sudan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Chad, Somalia, Eritrea and Tunisia also have been recorded. MORE

Tunisian business faces up to murky past

Tunisia's business community is trying to come to terms with the changed circumstances and aspirations of a post-revolutionary world, even as some of its members are dogged by the legacy of the former regime. "It's not every year we have a revolution," Hichem Elloumi of the UTICA, the Tunisian employers' association, argued during a radio discussion last week. "It's not even every 10 years. We weren't prepared for this." Following the overthrow in January of Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali, president for 23 years, the Tunisian press published revelations about public and private sector corruption. The business interests of relatives of Mr Ben Ali and Leila Trabelsi, his wife, extended from car distribution and importing consumer products to retailing, cement, air transport, property, telecommunications, banking and the media. The central bank estimates that in a country of 10m people, about 180 companies were controlled by individuals either related to Mr Ben Ali or Ms Trabelsi, or close associates of their families. The Jasmin Revolution had uncovered a banana republic MORE