Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard denounced the rollback of human rights in Tunisia on Friday after a four-day visit where she met with several human rights defenders, civil society representatives, the Tunisian Judges Association, lawyers, political parties, journalists, victims of human rights violations and families of arbitrarily detained people.

In response to her visit, the Secretary General stated:

It is alarming and distressing to witness the drastic rollback of the human rights progress that Tunisia had made since the 2011 revolution. Three years on since President Kais Saied suspended Parliament and began to seize control of the State, violations that we thought part of Tunisia’s past are becoming more and more discernible and systematic. The institution of justice has been brought to heel, while arrests and arbitrary prosecutions are multiplying, affecting the leaders of the political opposition, journalists, activists, lawyers, magistrates, trade unionists, businesspeople, civil servants, women judges and activists, migrants and refugees. People who have not yet been directly affected told me they fear that their freedom could be curtailed at any time.

Amnesty International called on the European Union to re-assess their engagement with Tunisian authorities to ensure that cooperation contributes to ending the human rights crisis. Amnesty International is also calling on the Tunisian authorities to:

1. Drop the unfounded charges against dissidents and critics and release all those arbitrarily detained solely for the exercise of their human rights;
2. Reverse all measures taken to undermine judicial independence, including by repealing decree law 2022-35, which gives the President the authority to summarily dismiss judges; implement the decision of the Administrative Tribunal of 9 August 2022 and reinstate the 57 judges and prosecutors arbitrarily dismissed by the President; stop all interference of the executive in matters concerning the independence of the judiciary; and end all forms of harassment or reprisal against Tunisian judges and lawyers;
3. Repeal Presidential Decree-Law 2022-54; release all those prosecuted and detained solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.

The political and judicial state of Tunisia has been in flux in recent years after Tunisia President Kais Saied issued a decree in 2022 which allowed him to dismiss any judge based on vague criteria without due process. Since the decree, several officials who have opposed President Saied have recently found themselves imprisoned. There also has been a crackdown on free speech and free association in the country, as attacks on journalists, lawyers, and human rights groups have escalated. In May 2024, the National Syndicate of Tunisian Journalists asked the Tunisian interior ministry to strengthen and mandate laws to protect journalists and their work.