Tag: unemployment

Brutal Tunisian Police Response Fuels 2nd Day of Protests in Tataouine

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Police used tear gas on Sunday to disperse residents in the restive Tunisian city of Tataouine protesting their leader’s detention and the region’s high unemployment rate. Demonstrators formed a sit-in protest camp at El Kamour, outside Tataouine, two months ago to demand the jobs in the oil and gas sector the government promised them in 2017.

Over the past two months, after three years of empty promises, residents of Tataouine demanding more job and economic development opportunities have been staging peaceful demonstrations. On Saturday night, security forces raided the El Kamour sit-in and arrested movement spokesperson Tarek Haddad and other members, who were released on Sunday morning. 

With Haddad still in detention, El Kamour sit-in members took to the streets on Sunday morning calling for his release, protesting the use of force during the Saturday raid and lags in regional economic development. Protestors threw stones at law enforcement officers, blockaded roads with burning tires, and allegedly threw Molotov cocktails at the district police station. 

On June 22 the Tataouine Local Labour Union (URT), which falls under the powerful Tunisian General Workers Union (UGTT), launched a “general strike.”  

They called for authorities to release the activists and criticized the police’s overzealous response, warning “they would be forced to resort to other, more severe forms of struggle” if their demands are not met.  

UGTT Secretary General Noureddine Taboubi echoed the URT demands, and urged the government to enter into “a peaceful and responsible dialogue with a view to finding a way out and giving hope to unemployed youth.” 

As requested, the House of People’s Representatives Bureau confirmed they discussed the situation in Tataouine during their Monday afternoon meeting. The energy minister has also agreed to a meeting in Tataouine on June 23, Tataouine District Governor Adel Werghi said on June 22.  

The Tunisia Press Agency (TAP) reports eight security officers were injured on Sunday. Werghi has defended the police response, saying the intervention was “carried out in accordance with the law.” 

The security forces used tear gas to disperse protestors on Sunday, but undeterred protestors returned on Monday chanting, “we will not give up, we want our right to development and jobs.” The security forces again resorted to using tear gas to diffuse protestors, according to witness and media reports.  

Despite having oil, gas, and underground water reserves, the economy in Tataouine remains primarily agriculture-based. After a 2017 sit-in in El Kamour, the UGTT negotiated a deal between the Tunisian government and sit-in leaders that was supposed to bring in $28 million worth of investment per annum to the impoverished region.  

Protestors say the deal has not materialized and have reverted to the same sit-in tactics used to draw attention to their cause three years ago. Citizens in a number of governorates are feeling the weight of unemployment and Tunisia’s economic stagnation, including in neighboring Kebili and Gafsa. Unemployed residents of the neighboring Gafsa governorate joined the Tataouine protest on June 22.

Read also: Subject of Tunisian COVID-19 Scandal Details Quarantine ‘Escape’

 

 

MENA Region Faces Wave of Post-Lockdown Protests

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Citizens of several countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have taken to the streets following the easing of COVID-19 measures. Citizens are demanding action from their governments after having adhered to painful lockdowns and curfews that brought severe economic hardship.

In Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Tunisia, large protests have emerged over the last week as citizens call upon government officials to ease their suffering. While COVID-19 fears begin to wane, a new focus on structural poverty and inefficient government is emerging across the region as protesters express their discontent.

Lebanon

The Lebanese military arrested dozens of protesters on Monday, June 15, for alleged acts of vandalism. Protesters expressed their frustration with skyrocketing inflation amid a spiraling currency crisis, while the indebted nation struggles to balance its debt obligations with popular demands for a significant increase in living conditions.

After nearly two months of empty streets, economic deprivation, and fear of the coronavirus, the Lebanese people have returned to the streets to protest the lack of solutions offered by the government of Hassan Diab. Banks and shops were attacked as Lebanese people grow more desperate, even as new sanctions on neighboring country Syria are likely to further damage Lebanon’s economy.

Iraq

Newly inaugurated prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s “honeymoon phase” in government has ended quickly as increasing austerity measures are sparking furious protests. Monthly pensions were hit by a drop in oil-revenue that is forcing the government to take unpopular measures. Nearly one million Iraqis depend on their pension each month and this month the $920 pension was more than $100 short, according to France24.

The Iraqi government has introduced several ambitious reform plans, but a dramatic fall in government revenue as a result of cratered oil prices and production cuts has meant introducing painful cuts to public sector salaries and pensions. Public sector employment has served as a method to appease Iraqis since the 2003 US invasion, but falling state oil revenues have now undermined this strategy.

Syria

Syria has seen few large protests since the 2011 pro-democracy protests that started a civil war. But protests again emerged over the rise in prices of basic necessities, a doubling in food prices and continued corruption in government. The city of Druze saw four days of intense protests as the Syrian Pound continues to fall dramatically in value.

The protesters are unlikely to see a swift resolution to their concerns as the “Caesar Act,” a new round of US sanctions targeting Syria, is set to heavily impact the last remaining economic activity that has sustained the country’s flailing economy. With an apparent consolidation of power ongoing in Damascus that has gone public, Bashar al-Assad’s regime is facing renewed pressure from all sides.

Tunisia

Protests have emerged in at least seven Tunisian cities, Reuters reported on Thursday, June 18. Unemployed and economically deprived people across the country protested what they considered government inaction in the face of a continued economic crisis. University graduates shouted “we need jobs” in Gafsa and hundreds protested in Hajeb el Ayoun and Sidi Bouzid.

The Tunisian tourism sector has suffered an unprecedented crisis after COVID-19 measures closed borders and shut the industry that provides 10% of state revenue. After a decade of high inflation and unemployment, Tunisians now call for an increased focus on jobs by protesting and even halting the country’s phosphate production through sit-ins.

A new era

The current protests across the MENA-region are likely only the beginning of popular unrest in the region, with global institutes like the IMF predicting that local economies will suffer from post-lockdown economic woes for some time to come. Protests against corruption and ineffective government appear to be supported by data, and the World Bank has called for greater transparency from MENA-governments.

As global oil prices continue to be volatile, supported by painful production cuts, revenue will likely remain impacted in many oil-dependent MENA-countries. With structural economic issues in many countries, unemployment and poverty are likely to worsen in the months ahead, as the region braces itself for a new era of popular discontent.

Billionaires Profit as Working People Starve

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In the three months since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, US billionaires have become $565 billion richer, while 43 million Americans have lost their jobs, a report by the Institute for Policy Studies has revealed. The report reflects a vast disconnect between the world’s richest and everyone else.

Far from being just a US problem, the world’s billionaires have profited from trillions of dollars in tax-payer funded stimulus, meaning the poor and working classes are literally paying for the success of the wealthy. Politicians have justified stimulus for stock markets as a way to ensure citizens would not lose their jobs, but the opposite has happened.

No crisis for billionaires

Tens of millions of people in the US alone have lost their jobs, and, after the crisis, they will be asked to pay for the stock-market stimulus through increased taxes or reduced public spending.

The colossal transfer of wealth directly from the poor and working-classes to the rich that has occurred over the last months has not been an exception, but the rule over recent decades.

Because billionaires do not work for their money but instead profit from investments, they pay minimal taxes over their income, often paying less in taxes relatively than a shopkeeper, office worker, or taxi driver would.

Multi-billionaire Warren Buffet highlighted this problem when he revealed that his secretary pays more of her income into taxes than he does.

Global concentration of wealth

The concentration of wealth in the hands of a select few is a global problem. According to the EU, 70% of the world’s population owns only 3% of the world’s wealth. In 2018 alone, billionaires’ wealth increased by 12%, or $2.5 billion a day, while the poorest people’s combined wealth actually declined by 11%.

The decades of supply-side economics have literally taken money from the poor and given it directly to the rich.

Over the past three decades the world’s richest have become 300% richer while the world’s poorest saw no increase in wealth whatsoever. If our current trend continues, by 2050 the world’s richest 0.1% of the population will own more wealth than all working people on earth.

Middle-Eastern fortunes

In the Middle East and North Africa, the concentration of wealth is harder to measure as fortunes are more opaque and often hidden in foreign bank accounts or real-estate. Forbes magazine compiles an annual list of the world’s richest that reveals some of the vast wealth held by a few in the region.

In Israel, 9 individuals hold $28.6 billion in private wealth, Egypt’s 11 billionaires have $15.4 billion, and the UAE has 11 billionaires worth a combined $24.7 billion. Turkey has the most egregious concentration of wealth, with 22 people hoarding $37.1 billion of wealth. Like the United States the ultra-rich in the MENA barely pay taxes, meaning they are literally taking from the poor.

Stark contrast

The fortunes of the world’s moneyed elite stand in stark contrast with the fate of the poor. The UN announced that thousands are likely to suffer and die in Yemen, after 30 nations together failed to raise $2.4 billion required to fund COVID-19 and basics like food and water. The UN has warned of an approaching famine of “biblical proportions.”

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program in Yemen have had to halve the food rations they give to starving people due to lack of funds. The total bill to save thousands in Yemen is $2.4 billion, which is less than 7% of the money Amazon-owner Jeff Bezos’ has made since March 18 this year.

The contrast between the vast fortunes of the rich and the terrible plight of the poor reveals that our world appears to have returned to a state of feudal lords and working peasants. While it might not be immoral to be tremendously rich, doing so while your neighbors suffer and starve defies human morality and basic compassion.

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