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The revolutionary forces of the Arab uprising is confronted with counter-revolutionary forces according to the theory by Marx, Engels and Hegel. In Tunisia, it was opportune to interrupt any counter-revolution by means of a political assassination of opposition leader Chokri Belaid. It was a professional hit by a sniper who marked his head, throat and chest. President Moncef Marzouki cut his European tour short and heads back home to a nation in revolt.
Mass protests after Tunisian opposition leader shot dead
(France24) – Offices of Tunisia’s ruling Islamist Ennahda party have been attacked and thousands of angry Tunisians are protesting after the killing Wednesday morning of leading leftist and secular politician Chokri Belaid.
Thousands of angry Tunisians took to the streets of the capital Tunis Wednesday following the assassination of a leading secular opposition figure that morning.
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The scene of the crime - Belaid was shot as he was leaving home for work.While motives for his killing remained unclear on Wednesday, Belaid’s party was a member of the Popular Front coalition of parties that is vigorously opposed to the government, dominated by the Islamist Ennahda party, which was elected in December 2011.
Many thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of the capital as well as several other Tunisian towns to voice their anger at what they perceived to be a crime committed by Islamists in the face of secular opposition.
According to agency reports, the offices of the Ennahda party were “sacked” and “torched” in the towns of Mezzouna and Gafsa, where angry protests were also taking place.
Tunisian PM condemns opposition leader’s killing as “assassination of revolution”
TUNIS, Tunisia (Hurriyet) – Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali said the identity of the killer of Shokri Belaid, a staunch secular opponent of the moderate Islamist-led government, was unknown. Belaid was a leading member of the opposition Popular Front party.
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“The murder of Belaid is a political assassination and the assassination of the Tunisian revolution. By killing him they wanted to silence his voice,” said Jebali, who heads the government led by the Ennahda party, which won Tunisia’s first post-Arab Spring election in 2011.
“Shokri Belaid was killed today by four bullets to the head and chest … doctors told us that he has died. This is a sad day for Tunisia,” Ziad Lakhader, a leader of the Popular Front, told Reuters. Other party sources confirmed his death.
Tunisia, the first Arab country to oust its leader and hold free elections as uprisings spread around the region two years ago, has so far made a relatively smooth transition to democracy. Ennahda won 42 percent of seats in the first post-Arab Spring elections in October 2011 and formed a government in coalition with two secular parties, President Moncef Marzouki’s Congress for the Republic and Ettakatol.
However, the government has faced many protests over economic hardship. Hampered by declining trade with the crisis-hit euro zone, it has struggled to deliver the better living standards that many Tunisians had hoped for.
And it says al Qaeda-linked militants have been accumulating weapons with the aim of creating an Islamic state. Police, who demonstrated outside the prime minister’s office last month, say they do not have the appropriate resources to deal with the threat from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and domestic Islamist militants who have easy access to weapons from neighbouring Libya.
Algerian gas plant hostage crisis, 11 Tunisians among terrorists
(CBS News) – A Tunisian opposition leader critical of the Islamist-led government and violence by radical Muslims was shot to death Wednesday — the first political assassination in post-revolutionary Tunisia.
The killing is likely to heighten tensions in the North African nation whose path from dictatorship to democracy so far has been seen as a model for the Arab world.
Chokri Belaid, a leading member of a leftist alliance of parties known as the Popular Front, was shot as he left his house in the capital, Tunis, the state news agency TAP reported. It said he was taken to a nearby medical clinic, where he died.
Belaid, a 48-year-old lawyer, had been a fierce critic of Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party that dominates the government.
