On January 14, prominent activist and former president of Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission, Sihem Bensedrine, began a hunger strike while detained in Manouba prison. “I will no longer stand the injustice that strikes me. Justice cannot be based on lies and calumnies, but on concrete, tangible evidence,” she said in a message relayed by her lawyers.
Bensedrine has fought the abuses of successive governments for four decades and was imprisoned under former presidents Habib Bourguiba and Ben Ali. Now she is detained under Tunisia’s authoritarian president, Kais Saied, in a clear case of retaliation for her human rights work.
A judge ordered the detention of Bensedrine on August 1, 2024, in connection with her role as head of the Truth and Dignity Commission between 2014 and 2018. She faces charges of “using her position to gain unfair advantage for herself or a third party,” “fraud,” and “forgery,” related to the Commission’s final report. According to her lawyers, her detention is solely based on a 2020 complaint accusing her of falsifying the report. She faces prosecution in four other cases related to her work as commission president.
Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission, established in 2013 at the outset of the democratic transition, was mandated with investigating human rights violations and corruption that happened from 1955 to 2013, and to propose measures for accountability, remedy, and rehabilitation. Yet it faced many challenges and obstacles in fulfilling its mandate. Although the commission transferred 205 cases of grave human rights abuses to specialized chambers, leading to prosecutions, no judgments have been issued.
Saied’s election and takeover of the judiciary ultimately halted Tunisia’s transitional justice efforts altogether.
Bensedrine has been in pretrial detention for almost six months, and a judge will decide in the coming days whether to extend her detention further. Tunisian authorities should release her and drop all charges, given they relate to her work as commission president.
The date Bensedrine began her hunger strike, January 14, originally commemorated the historic mobilization of Tunisians against authoritarianism, which resulted in the 2011 ouster of autocrat Ben Ali. Following his July 2021 power grab, Saied changed the public holiday to December 17, in a symbolic rupture with the decade of democratic transition. Nevertheless, this past January 14, dozens of people demonstrated on the central Habib Bourguiba Avenue, holding portraits or wearing masks with the effigy of political prisoners – including Bensedrine.