Tunisia: a petition against an elected Islamist who justified the assassination of Samuel Paty

The Tunisian Assembly (or Parliament) meeting in plenary session on February 26, 2020. FETHI BELAID / AFP

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In Tunisia, civil society figures denounce the words of an Islamist deputy who justified the murder in France of history professor Samuel Paty.

Coming from academia, research or the world of art, about forty of them have signed an unequivocal petition to denounce abject remarks and demand justice.

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The signatories, mainly from the progressive and modernist academic world, consider it scandalous that a deputy of the nation can afford to justify the death by

beheading of the French teacher

, reports our correspondent in Tunis,

Michel Picard

.

MP Rached Khiari - independent but elected under the banner of the Islamist movement Karama, member of the governing coalition - wrote on Facebook: “ 

Any attack on the Prophet Muhammad is the greatest of crimes.

All those who commit it (...) must take responsibility for its consequences

 ”.

The forty intellectual authors of the petition on Change.org therefore call for the lifting of the parliamentary immunity of the elected so that it is tried.

New page of history with the revolution

Recalling that the Tunisian revolution opened a new page of history banishing systems of violence and dictatorship, Tunisian intellectuals stress that the 2014 Constitution opens up an irrevocable space of freedom.

Freedom of worship, belief and conscience of which the State is the sole guarantor.

Welcoming the condemnations by political and civil society actors of this verbal terror represented in the Assembly, the signatories are offended by the silence of most of the political world.

At a time when publications calling for respect for the prophet are multiplying on Tunisian social networks, this petition clearly and firmly reminds us that " 

the justification of terrorism is one of the abject forms of terrorism

 ".

The ball is now in the court of the Tunisian state whose leaders have so far not reacted to the words of the deputy.

Read also: France: the executive wants to sanction the dissemination of online information threatening others

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  • Tunisia

  • Terrorism

  • France

  • Education

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