Tunisia: Understanding Conflict 2012 - Johns Hopkins School of ...

nip in the bud any challenges to party authority. Understandably, civil society in Tunisia,
under the constant gaze of security forces and party members, atrophied. For most
citizens, participating meaningfully in associational life simply wasn’t worth the risks of
imprisonment or torture.
To ensure that civil society groups were not working “against the national
consensus,” Ben Ali and the ruling RCD used a number of distinct mechanisms of
control. The Interior Ministry, in addition to granting permits to civil society groups, also
provided funding to those groups whose loyalty they hoped to shore up. Ben Ali’s
government provided the funds to build headquarters for UTICA, as has been mentioned,
as well as for the Union de Femmes Démocrates, a group which prided itself on its
independence. In some cases, when an association became effective in contesting the
regime—such as the Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH)—the regime would create
a duplicate organization, fund it and provide its membership from the party ranks in an
attempt to reduce the influence of the original association.
A crucial shift came when the government amended the Law of Associations in
1992, forbidding any association of a “general character” from denying membership to
any person who professes to ascribe to the organization’s ideals and mission. The law
allowed the RCD to infiltrate NGOs by flooding their ranks with party loyalists who
would report on any activities or plans that were disagreeable to the party. Members of
civil society organizations with whom we met in Kairouan reported having to inform
government officials of all meetings of more than two people and provide the time and
location of all meetings along with a list of names of all persons in attendance. As the
internet and then social media became a natural forum for organizing, the regime closely
monitored the activities of known activists. One professor and member of the Femmes
Démocrates reported having forwarded a message through Facebook in 2009 about a
rumor concerning regime behavior and the next day being called to meet with the
judiciary police—she was subsequently sentenced to 8 months house arrest (SAIS Group
Meeting, 23 January 2012). Most citizens, however, preferred simply to avoid
confrontation rather than risking scrutiny from the regime’s security forces. A group of
university students in Tunis all agreed that before the revolution their life revolved
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