Tunisia: Rambouillet Attack – Tunisian Civil Society Condemns Heinous, Cowardly and Harmful Act to Tunisia’s Reputation

Tunis/Tunisia — Following the terrorist crime in Rambouillet that claimed the life of a French citizen working at the police station in the French town of Rambouillet, the Tunisian civil society strongly condemned an “odious, cowardly and harmful act to Tunisia’s reputation, perpetrated once again by a member of the Tunisian community in France.”

In a joint statement issued on Tuesday, the signatories, some 30 associations, said that the preliminary investigations reveal that this crime is part of a series of terrorist acts committed in the name of Islam by extremist political movements calling themselves “Islamists” and whose execution is sometimes entrusted to simple-minded individuals who are easy prey to the hateful and misleading propaganda supported by these organisations.

Such discourses, they regret, have enjoyed the support or indulgence of the parties that were in power during the last decade.

The associations also deplore the obstinacy of some parties, particularly the Ennahdha Movement and the organisations and associations that have pledged allegiance to it since 2011, including the Al Karama Coalition, to disseminate discourses encouraging hatred, sedition and violence on social networks and the media, especially the outlawed.

While reiterating their condemnation of these heinous criminal acts, whose victims are innocent citizens, the associations express their total solidarity with the families of the victims and with the French people and regret the resurgence of hate and racist campaigns against Tunisians and all foreigners residing in France and the other European countries, the same source reads.

The Associations regret the long silence of the official, executive and legislative authorities, and consider that the government’s statement is important but rather weak compared to the firm principled positions against terrorism at home and abroad, which have characterised the Tunisian policy for the last decades.

The signatories conclude that the escalation of global terrorism constitutes a threat to peaceful coexistence between peoples and that states must exert joint efforts to curb it by improving the content of information and educational programmes and by facilitating the launch of development projects that are a bulwark against young people falling prey to transnational and cross-border terrorist organisations.

The signatory associations include notably the Attalaki Association for Freedom and Equality, the Beity Association, Citizenship and Freedom Association, the Tunisian Association for Defending Individual Freedoms, the Tunisian Association for the Defence of University Values, the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, Vigilance for Democracy and the Civic State, the Tunis Centre for Press Freedom, Euromedrights, the Association of Tunisians in France, the Tunisian League for the Defence of Human Rights, the National Observatory for the Defence of the Civilian Nature of the State, the Organisation 23_10 for the Support of the Democratic Transition Process, the Organisation against Torture in Tunisia and the National Union of Tunisian Journalists.

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