Professor Moncef BEN SALEM
Phone : 216 74 274 053
Sfax, March 30th 2006

More than 19 years have passed enduring prison, torture, house arrests, phone line cuts, and deprivation of the most elementary rights (right to work, health insurance, passport, and right to free movement at least on the Tunisian land).
A long and terrible ordeal that did not appease the rancour of the dictatorship nor did it satisfy its thirst for more intimidation and fierceness.
Indeed the Tunisian authorities laid into my children and inflicted on them the worst atrocities in defiance of the universal principle of right that prohibit revenge and advocate the individualisation of a sentence.
In the University of Science in Sfax, that I helped to found in 1986, my daughter Meriem suffered a permanent harassment for 3 consecutives years from part of a group of students belonging to the RCD (current government party). The repercussions of this harassment are still perceptible on her psychological state as on her school career which is practically broken. This has been proved through the testimony of one of the member of the group who confessed that they committed their crime following their officials’orders.
Now they lay into my son Usama who is condemned to leave college 2 months before getting his master degree because of an abusive and illegal lay-off. The real motive for this lay-off is his democratic election as a delegate in the scientific council of the University although the official motives talk about more understandable and fashionable accusations like non-authorized meeting, illegal demonstrations, proselytism, class disruption, goods destruction.
My other son Abbas has also been victim of a strange traffic accident in 1996 and no investigation has been engaged since then. He now suffers from a permanent handicap and we bear the colossal treatment expenses without any health coverage.
Therefore, my family and I found ourselves force to start a hunger strike as being the only mean to protest against the appalling atrocities we suffer since the coup in November 7th 1987.
This call aims to inform the national and international public about our ordeal and the alarming situation of the human rights in Tunisia.
My determination to recover our rights is inexhaustible and your support would be an inestimable contribution.