Tunisia declares state of emergency in wake of beach massacre

[VinnieV]

Tunisia declares state of emergency in wake of beach massacre, saying country is 'not safe'

Decree, which grants extra powers to police, will be implemented for a renewable 30-day period

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 05 July, 2015, 2:29am
UPDATED : Sunday, 05 July, 2015, 2:29am

Agence France-Presse in Tunis

President Beji Caid Sebsi blamed the security situation on the lack of international resolve in targeting the Islamic State group throughout the region.

Tunisia’s president declared a state of emergency on Saturday in response to a second deadly attack on foreigners in three months, saying the country is “not safe” and risks collapse from further extremist attacks.

With a nationwide televised address, President Beji Caid Sebsi officially reintroduced urgent security measures for Tunisia that had been lifted in March 2014.

Sebsi said an “exceptional situation required exceptional measures” but pledged to respect freedom of expression.

The decision came just over a week after a gunman at the popular beach resort of Sousse attacked foreign tourists, killing 38 people. Sebsi said the state of emergency would last 30 days.

“Tunisia faces a very serious danger and it should take any possible measures to maintain security and safety,” he said. “As we see in other countries, if attacks like Sousse happen again, the country will collapse.”

Sebsi blamed the poor security in Libya for Tunisia’s problems, and the lack of international resolve in targeting the Islamic State group throughout the region. He said Tunisia specifically had been a target of the extremist group because it had a functioning, secular democracy.

The North African state, which has seen an exodus of tourists, has admitted its security services were unprepared for the attack in Port El Kantaoui and police were too slow to respond.

Apart from barring strike action and unauthorised meetings, the measure allows the authorities to carry out raids on homes at any time of the day and to keep tabs on the media.

Independent political analyst Selim Kharrat questioned the timing of Sebsi's announcement, eight days after the beach attack, and warned that a state of emergency "could become an excellent tool of repression".

Tunisia has faced a post-revolution surge in jihadist violence in which dozens of police and soldiers have been killed.

The June 26 beach shooting was the second such rampage in three months, after another jihadist attack at the National Bardo Museum in Tunis on March 18 that killed 21 tourists and a policeman.

Tunisia had already stepped up security after the museum attack and announced in the wake of the beach killings that it would deploy armed guards on beaches and close 80 mosques suspected of fanning extremism.

On Friday, Prime Minister Habib Essid acknowledged police had taken too long to respond to the attack in Port El Kantaoui near Sousse.

"The time of the reaction - this is the problem," Essid told the BBC. "We feel really sorry about what happened."

Essid spoke as Britain's Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister David Cameron led a minute's silence for the victims, 30 of whom were British.

Tourists fled in horror as a Tunisian identified as 23-year-old Saif Rezgui pulled a Kalashnikov assault rifle from inside a beach umbrella and went on a shooting spree outside a five-star hotel.

Three Irish nationals, two Germans, one Belgian, one Portuguese and a Russian also died.

On Thursday, Tunisia announced it had arrested eight people, including a woman, "with direct links" to the attack.

Tunisian authorities have said Rezgui received weapons training from jihadists in neighbouring Libya, travelling to the chaos-wracked country at the same time as the two young Tunisians behind the Bardo attack.

In the past four years, dozens of security forces have been killed in Tunisia in ambushes attributed to jihadists - mainly in the western Chaambi Mountains on the border with Algeria.

Disillusionment and social exclusion as well as economic woes have fuelled radicalism among youths in Tunisia.

About 3,000 Tunisians have gone to Iraq, Syria and Libya to join jihadist ranks.

The militant attacks have dealt a heavy blow to the tourism sector which contributes between seven and eight per cent of Tunisia's GDP. The sector accounts for 400,000 jobs, directly and indirectly, and it is a key source of foreign revenue for a country where the local currency, the dinar, is non-convertible.

Additional reporting by Associated Press