{"id":64689,"date":"2013-02-06T20:57:07","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T18:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=64689"},"modified":"2014-01-08T00:11:18","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T22:11:18","slug":"tunisian-opposition-leader-shot-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/02\/06\/tunisian-opposition-leader-shot-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Tunisian opposition leader shot dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"TUNUS\"<\/p>\n
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FETHI BELAID\/AFP\/GETTY IMAGES –<\/span>\u00a0Choukri Belaid speaks at a meeting with other lawyers in Tunis to express their solidarity with the residents of Sidi Bouzid, in this file photo from December, 2010.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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By\u00a0Abigail Hauslohner<\/span><\/span>,\u00a0Updated: Wednesday, February\u00a06,\u00a012:39\u00a0PM<\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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CAIRO \u2014 A Tunisian opposition leader was shot dead outside his home in Tunisia\u2019s capital Wednesday, a day after he received the latest in a string of death threats and called for a national conversation on political violence.<\/div>\n
The assassination of Chokri Belaid, an outspoken critic of Tunisia\u2019s Islamist government, was the first in Tunisia since the\u00a0uprising two years ago that ousted\u00a0President\u00a0Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. It follows a growing pattern of political and religious violence in the country over the past two years, as democratic elections coupled with the fall of a dictator have empowered Islamist groups, including fundamentalist Salafis, to flex their muscles in an environment with\u00a0freer politics but far less security<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Belaid warned at a news conference Tuesday that Tunisia could soon be engulfed by political violence, and he called for a national conference to address the subject.<\/div>\n
Ennahda issued a statement calling Belaid\u2019s death a \u201cheinous\u201d crime,and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice, the Associated Press reported. The party said it \u201cholds the conspiring parties behind this crime fully responsible and calls on security authorities to make all possible efforts to find the criminals and bring them to justice.\u201d Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali told Agence France-Presse the killing was an act of \u201cterrorism.\u201d<\/div>\n
Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki also expressed shock in a statement on his Facebook page Wednesday. He called on Tunisians to exercise \u201cself restraint, and not to be hasty in analyzing this crime and cowardly act or to blame one side or another for it.\u201d He said law enforcement authorities should investigate promptly and thoroughly, and bring those responsible for the killing to justice.<\/div>\n
Tunisia\u2019s Salafists have carried out a spate of attacks over the past year on liberal intellectuals, artists, human rights activists and journalists. They have also attacked alcohol sellers, art exhibits, movie theatres and shrines. They are accused of carrying out an\u00a0attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tunis in September, allegedly in retaliation for an anti-Islam film that was produced in the United States.<\/div>\n
The Salafists, who have called for the implementation of Islamic law in Tunisian society, have mostly rejected participation in the country\u2019s still nascent democracy. Belaid and other opposition members had accused a shadowy group of Salafist militias, who call themselves \u201cThe Leagues for the Protection of the Revolution,\u201d of being behind much of the violence. Even though Ennahda takes a markedly more moderate approach, watchdog groups say the government seems hesitant to crack down on the more extreme Islamists.<\/div>\n
Complaints filed by the victims of alleged Salafist violence to Tunisia\u2019s police force and judiciary, for example, rarely yield serious investigations and prosecutions, said Eric Goldstein, the deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa for Human Rights Watch.<\/div>\n
\u201cThere is a climate of laxness toward violence in Tunisia,\u201d Goldstein said. The government\u2019s \u201cresponse to these attacks by Salafi groups is that it\u2019s better to have dialogue with them and bring them into the political process rather than throw them in jail.<\/div>\n
\u201cSooner or later, they\u2019re going to have to deal with extremists in their country and violations of their laws. . . . Let\u2019s hope this is the wake-up call.\u201d<\/div>\n
In a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Popular Front leaders drew attention to Belaid\u2019s calls for a national conference to combat violence. The Front said Belaid \u201cfelt threats to his personal safety\u201d and was warned by a colleague as late as Tuesday that \u201carmed people are after him.\u201d<\/div>\n
A number of Belaid\u2019s colleagues accused Ennahda on Wednesday of being behind Belaid\u2019s assassination. \u201cThe people who killed [him] are being adopted and cared for by the people in power,\u201d Popular Front member Hamma Alhammami said at a televised news conference.<\/div>\n
Clashes erupted between rock-throwing protesters and security forces, who fired tear gas, in downtown Tunis and outside the country\u2019s Interior Ministry on Wednesday afternoon.<\/div>\n
Television footage from earlier in the day showed angry crowds of Belaid\u2019s supporters swarming an ambulance outside a clinic as his lifeless body was loaded into it for transport to a different hospital.<\/div>\n
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Sharaf al-Hourani in Cairo contributed to this report.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 FETHI BELAID\/AFP\/GETTY IMAGES –\u00a0Choukri Belaid speaks at a meeting with other lawyers in Tunis to express their solidarity with the residents of Sidi Bouzid, in this file photo from December, 2010. By\u00a0Abigail Hauslohner,\u00a0Updated: Wednesday, February\u00a06,\u00a012:39\u00a0PM CAIRO \u2014 A Tunisian opposition leader was shot dead outside his home in Tunisia\u2019s capital Wednesday, a day after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":64691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}