The opposition National Salvation Front and Ennahda movement, the most prominent component of it, called on their supporters to demonstrate on Sunday despite the decision to ban demonstrations, while the authorities continued the campaign of arrests against opponents.
And the Salvation Front said - in a statement - on Thursday evening that the decision of the governor of Tunisia to prevent the front from demonstrating on Sunday is arbitrary and invalid and based on reasons that have nothing to do with the law.
The governor of Tunisia refused to allow the Front to organize protests on Sunday, claiming that some of its leaders were facing charges of "conspiring against the security of the country."
For its part, the Ennahda movement called on its supporters and all the vital forces in the country to demonstrate peacefully on Sunday in Habib Bourguiba Street in the capital, Tunis.
In a statement, the movement denounced what it described as illegal attempts to harass and sow confusion on the part of the governor of Tunisia, stressing that the latter has no right to prevent protests.
The authorities recently arrested 3 leaders of the opposition Salvation Front, Jawhar bin Mubarak, Shaimaa Issa and Reda Belhaj, in the context of what the authorities called the case of conspiracy against state security.
They were arrested as part of a campaign against politicians, judges, trade unionists, a prominent businessman and the director of Mosaique, a private radio station.
While Tunisian President Kais Said says that the arrests come within the framework of accountability and the application of the law, the opposition asserts that the campaign aims to liquidate her.
"escalatory step"
Before the upcoming demonstration of the National Salvation Front, the Tunisian General Labor Union (the largest labor organization in the country) will organize a demonstration tomorrow, Saturday, in the Tunisian capital, amid escalating tensions between the organization and the authorities.
Before the upcoming protest, which some political parties announced that they would participate in, the Tunisian authorities prevented Marco Perez Molina, responsible for cooperation with Africa and Asia in the Spanish trade unions, from entering the country and participating in the protest, deeming him an "undesirable" person.
The Labor Union said - in a statement - that the authorities deported Morena shortly after his arrival at Tunis-Carthage airport, and considered that preventing trade unionists from coming to Tunisia "targets the union and independent trade union action and deepens Tunisia's isolation."
The federation decided to call an emergency meeting to respond to the move, which it described as "hostile and escalatory." The Tunisian authorities recently expelled a senior European trade union official after her participation in a labor union demonstration.
On Thursday, the union's railway workers launched a strike, disrupting trains across Tunisia.
The Labor Union recently organized a series of protests to denounce what it said was targeting trade union work and freedoms, and said it would not accept tyranny.
arrest campaign
Meanwhile, the Tunisian authorities arrested Al-Khamis, the leader of the Ennahda Movement, Habib Al-Louz, and the former leader, Al-Sadiq Choro.
Al-Louz was a deputy in the Constituent Assembly after the revolution on behalf of the Ennahda movement, and he previously headed the movement after the arrest of Rashid Ghannouchi during the era of former President Habib Bourguiba, and Choro headed the movement before the revolution.
Al-Luz is the fourth arrested leader of Ennahda leaders, after former Prime Minister Ali Al-Areedh, former Minister of Justice Noureddine Al-Buhairi, and Fawzi Kammoun, former director of the office of the head of the movement, Rashid Ghannouchi, in addition to the resigned leader from Ennahda, Abdul Hamid Al-Jelassi.
For its part, the Ennahda movement condemned the arrest of Al-Louz and what it described as the expansion of the campaign of arbitrary arrests, which included symbols of the political opposition.
The movement's statement confirmed the existence of an attempt to intimidate every free vote after the inability to manage the country's social and economic problems, as the statement put it.
Simultaneously, a Tunisian court on Thursday rejected a request to release former Prime Minister Ali Al-Areedh, who has been detained since December in the context of what is known as the issue of sending fighters to Syria, and Al-Nahda describes the accusations against Al-Areedh and other leaders of the movement as fabricated.
In Washington, the US State Department on Thursday expressed its concern about the campaign of arrests against activists in Tunisia, under the pretext of their communication with the US embassy there.
"This is part of an escalating trend of arrests of those perceived to be opponents of the government," said department spokesman Ned Price.