Tunisia’s opposition National Salvation Front has announced that members of its leadership and supporters are taking part in a symbolic hunger strike, in solidarity with jailed lawyer Ayachi Hammami and other political detainees.
The move follows Hammami’s call for a three-day collective hunger strike to protest his detention conditions and those of other prisoners of conscience.
In a statement, the Front said it stood in solidarity with what it described as “prisoners of opinion” who have “turned their cells into arenas of struggle,” arguing that their arrests are part of a broader policy aimed at “criminalizing political and civic action and free speech.”
Prominent Tunisian lawyers, including two former heads of the national bar association, have also joined the hunger strike, protesting what they say are “unfair trials.”
Tunisian authorities arrested Hammami, a former minister and former head of the Liberties Commission, in early December to enforce a five-year prison sentence on charges of “conspiring against state security,” in a case dating back to early 2023 that involved several opposition figures and activists.
