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Issue 194, Friday 24 June 2005 - 17 Jumad al-Akhbar 1426

Al Nahda Party celebrates 24th anniversary

By Abdul Adil

The Tunisian Islamic party, Al Nahda, celebrated its twenty-fourth birthday on June 7. At a press conference held in central London for the occasion, the Party’s President, Sheikh Rashid Al Ghannouchi, said their goal was to attain democracy and freedom in Tunisia.
“We celebrate this anniversary, with full conviction that freedom and democracy are the common objectives agreed upon by all national forces, and that cooperation and coordination are our tools,” he said. Ghannouchi highlighted the human right abuses in his country.
The promises made by the former President Ben Ali in 1987 with promises of political and cultural freedoms were curtailed within two years of his coming to power. The slogans of ‘No injustice after this day’ and his call for a ‘genuine democratic life’ were “abandoned” and the Government began using the “tools of repression and persecution, as a substitute for dialogue with people.”
The entire leadership of Al Nahda were targeted leading to “repression with indiscriminate and arbitrary raids and arrests and use of torture against detainees and their relatives.” He recalled that within months of such repression, Tunisia’s prisons were filled with 30,000 people. The Sheikh called on the West to stop support for the Tunisian Government by “desisting from providing material and moral support to forces of despotism in the name of preserving security and stability.” However, he said that this did not mean that the West should intervene militarily in Tunisia. “This does not mean that this support should be used as a pretext for blackmail, intervention or for imposing military occupation,” said the Sheikh.
Ghannouchi argued that political changes were taking place in the Maghreb and other Arab countries which are also now “open to moderate Islamic parties” but Tunisia is an exception in that it “has sadly remained stubbornly outside this reform.”
Al Nahda does not want to use violence to bring about a change, the Sheikh emphasised. “Tunisia has been saved from the disaster of violence, not due to the security vigilance by the regime, but due to the opposition, particularly the Islamic opposition’s commitment to peaceful and civil action.”
Al Nahda is dedicated to freedom and democracy and “eradication of authoritarian absolute rule and rejects violence and terrorism.” The Party “strives for the establishment of the state of law, justice, reason and freedom, based on the essence of Islamic thought.” It is against discrimination against women and believes in “their equality before Allah and the law, in rights and obligations.”
Afifa Makhlufi, who is an elected member of the Political Bureau of the Al Nahda, said women have participated in the Party since its inception in 1981.