Tunisia

Minister visit to the “safe country of origin”

Two German Ministers make on your Maghreb Tour these days in Tunisia Station – in the view of the Federal government, a safe country of origin. But homosexuals living there dangerous.

It had improved since the fall of the dictatorship quite a bit in Tunisia, writes Abdessatar Ben Moussa, President of Tunisian League of human rights, in the run-up to the visits of Gerd Müller, Minister for economic cooperation, and Minister of the interior Thomas de Maizière. To be able to freedom of expression and freedom of the press, free elections and the right to non – governmental organizations and parties, for the lawyers, whose organization has recently been honored for their political mediation efforts with the Nobel peace prize, important steps in the right direction.

Abdessatar Ben Moussa

“But we hope for more. To not being tortured, is not systematic, but the Problem still exists, and the conditions of detention in prisons are pitiful,” says Ben Moussa. The cells are often assigned to double and triple, and the sanitary conditions are defective, are critical of human rights organisations. A glimmer of hope is a new law that, the Tunisian Parliament has adopted recently. Now anyone who is arrested has the right already in police custody access to a lawyer. “This is one of the fundamental safeguards against ill-treatment and torture,” says Emna Guellali, Director of the office of the organization Human Rights Watch in Tunis. So it could be prevented, that it come already on the guard’s Assault against the Suspect or that they are under pressure of false confessions to sign.

Points of criticism: torture and dealing with Homosexuals

Besides poor conditions of detention and torture, it is mainly dealing with Homosexuals, which is classified by Tunisian and international organisations as a concern. Homosexuality is not only in wide Parts of the society as a taboo, it is punishable by up to three years in prison. A stir in the case of six young men taken in a student’s home to the Central Tunisian city of Kairouan and sentenced in December to three years in prison and five years from the city of banished caused in the recent time. The charge was based on rectal examinations of the Suspect, with which you have regular anal sex should be demonstrated. Her lawyer has appealed the judgment.

After six weeks of imprisonment they were released on bail, until the judgment on appeal. “The Situation in the prison, with 190 people in a cell, you can’t imagine. When we came in, the other already knew why we are there. We wanted to pretend we were sentenced for hashish consumption, but they have just been waiting for us,” reported one of the accused who wishes to remain anonymous. Regularly, the young men of fellow prisoners and guards had been harassed. “One and a half months, they have beaten us every day. You have us beaten with sticks on their feet or with their fists against their heads, and they have trampled on. So people like us have no right to live.”

Both in the Maghreb travel: Federal Minister Gerd Müller (l., CSU), and Thomas de Maizière (CDU)

Opposition to the Constitution

Since the uprising in 2011, civil society mobilized, although, increasingly, for the rights of Homosexuals, at the same time, the reactions are exacerbated, however, stated Emna Guellali, which calls on the government to withdraw the relevant article in the criminal code without replacing it. “He is in conflict with the Tunisian Constitution and all international human rights standards.”

In the case of the six young people is at the 3. In March, the judgment is expected. No matter how it turns out, for the young defendant, it has destroyed his life, he says. “My future is over, everything is dark. Another year of Uni and I have in common.” But there he is threatened, so that he could not continue his / her studies. Also of his family, he will be rejected. Therefore, he can see it in Tunisia, no Chance. They would prefer to escape from the discrimination to Europe.