Kasserine: Five Men Stage Public Suicide Amidst Calls for a New Revolution

Five jobless residents of Kasserine attempted suicide today in a desperate attempt to call attention to the plight of the neglected region.

The five men say they are teachers who have been rejected from teaching jobs because the government says that they are unqualified. Yesterday, September 15th, they tied blue cords from around their necks to a horizontal pipe and sat on a high wall in front of the Regional Education Commission, threatening to hang themselves in public if they could not find work. Today they were taken to a hospital after fulfilling their threat and attempting to hang themselves.

One of the five remains in the hospital, reportedly in poor condition. The other four returned to the Regional Education Commission and placed the nooses around their necks once more.

The interior regions of Tunisia, including Kasserine near the western border with Algeria, have endured neglect and marginalization under the Ben Ali regime for decades, but the ouster of President Ben Ali last January appears to have changed little.

“This governorate is abandoned,”  said a man who gave his name as “Zied from Kasserine” to Tunisia Live. “There is a problem of information. Here there is no media.”

Doctors who attempted to convince the four men to leave the wall were rebuffed.

When the Tunisian revolution began in Sidi Bouzid last December, protests spread quickly through Southern Tunisia, fueled by anger at the government and high unemployment. Kasserine, about 60km west of Sidi Bouzid, was one of the first cities to protest, and police responded violently, killing demonstrators with live ammunition in early January. Eventually protests filled the streets of Tunis, and Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14th. “Kasserine is the capital of martyrs,” said Zied. “It is here that the revolution began.” But eight months later, the unemployment crisis has not improved.

“There are some people here with no work for 20 years,” said Mohamed Fathl Bouali, who called himself “a patriot from Kasserine.”

“They are making a new revolution in Kasserine,” Bouali shouted into the phone from Kasserine. “They are making a new revolution in Kasserine. They won’t eat. They stopped eating. They stopped everything. They are going to die. We need the help of the media.”

A video posted on Facebook appears to show the men being untied and taken away in an ambulance after their attempted suicide.