Kasserine, nine years after the Tunisian revolution ... What has been achieved for the "bride of martyrs"?

Muhammad Ali Latifi-Kasserine

Along the main street of the entrance to the governorate of Kasserine (central West Tunis), nothing indicates a formal change in the city or its infrastructure after nine years of revolution, only graffiti manuscripts on the front of the walls remind visitors of the slogans demanded in the January 14 2011 revolution that ended The fall of the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, on top of which is work and dignity.

The people of Kasserine Governorate (440,000 people) who paid the blood tax after standing against the dictatorship of the previous regime, see that the clock stopped at the revolution, and the city gained only more poverty and unemployment, because they have been waiting for some measure of development and social justice for years.

Disappointment
In these hot neighborhoods that led the 2011 revolution, such as Hay al-Nur and Hay al-Zuhur, residents of Kasserine receive increasing disappointment in January of each year, where their complaints remain as they were in poverty, unemployment, and political neglect. With the exception of freedom of expression and democracy, the situation has worsened on all levels.

Bassam Salhi, head of the Youth Forum for Citizenship Culture, told Al-Jazeera Net that the economic and social situation since the 2011 revolution is still deteriorating, due to the absence of an administrative strategy that is able to get out of his governorate from a hotbed of weakness, and the inability to advance the status of the Tunisian citizen, especially the citizens of the interior (provinces).

Al-Salhi adds that this difficult situation was the result of the failure of successive governments and the failure of decision-makers on the republican scale to find solutions to get the country out of the noose imposed by the global economic system, considering that social burdens are still permanent detonators in light of the lack of centralization.

For his part, civil society activist Walid Samaali expresses to Al-Jazeera Net his hope that the new President Qais Saeed and the next parliament will worsen social conditions and work to achieve development and decent living in the city of Kasserine, which gave Tunisia a lot of freedom thanks to the blood of its charitable children in the revolution.

Urgent solutions
In front of the governorate headquarters, the camps for the unemployed are still filling the place, and the protesters are continuing their sit-in to demand work and opportunities for investment unabated since the 2011 revolution, while cafes in Kasserine are crowded with unemployed youth, although most of them have university degrees.

Unemployed Mohammed Farah says to Al Jazeera Net that the only concern in this forgotten city is unemployment, as well as the absence of investment, indicating that the chasm and disparity that the previous regime created between the major centers and the inner governorates, is what has caused the increasing tragedy of this city.

For his part, human rights activist Mohamed El-Khadrawi adds that the situation has not registered any improvement since the revolution in the city of Kasserine, despite talking about its pivotal role in bombing the events of the Tunisian revolution, pointing out that future programs must be put in place that offer serious solutions for unemployed graduate graduates.

And unemployment rates in the city of Kasserine to 23%, compared to about 15% at the national level, according to the population census in 2014 published by the National Institute of Statistics (government), while the remaining regional and human development indicators remain in the country.

Martyr Festival
The surgeons, which did not heal, did not prevent the people of the city of the martyrs from celebrating the martyr's festival and holding many cultural performances under the slogan "Yes to positive distinction between the regions." The media commissioner, Jihan Nasri, told Al-Jazeera Net that three days were set for January each year to celebrate the festival. The martyr, in order to establish the blood of her beautiful youth

And she adds that this festival will be the national memory that preserves the history of the wounded and martyrs of the city of Kasserine, so that it will not be erased from the minds of the Tunisians, explaining that many of the wounded of the revolution were not fair to obtain compensation, according to her expression.

A request by “Lawyers Without Borders” and the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights was submitted in June 2015 to the Truth and Dignity Commission, in order to formally recognize the two minors as a “victim area” of pre-revolutionary politics, and the text demands compensation.

The slogans of the revolution are still written on the charred walls, which tell the story of the bullets cast on the bodies of Qabirt as the social demands that have not been achieved, waiting for the sun of social justice to shine upon them.