Tunisian ministry condemns assault on lecturers, students

Tunisian extremists are demanding a new set of strict Islamist laws for students  The Tunisian Ministry of Higher education condemned a sit-in by a group of Salafis at the University of Manouba (12 km west of Tunis) and their detention of the dean and a number of professors and administrators of the college.
Hundreds of demonstrators calling for women to be allowed to wear the Muslim veil in class clashed with students at the university on Tuesday for the second day running.
Protesters wearing the veil and bearded men wearing the Muslim tunic shouted “God Is Great”, facing other students responding “Islamists, Go Home.”
'Arabstoday' obtained a copy of the statement issued by the ministry, which said that "any resort to violence is unacceptable and inadmissible."
The statement also stressed that "the regulations imposed to identify each student before entering the University are for educational and security reasons", in a clear answer to the demands of the protests, who are calling for "registering veiled females and establishing a hall for prayers, ban mixing in classes and prevent women from teaching men and vice versa."
Laws in the educational institutions in Tunisia require identifying the identities of the students. As post-revolution Tunisia lacks any legislation allowing or banning the headscarf, faculty deans implement a 2005 decision that staff must be able to identify students.
 “A group of Salafists, dressed like Afghans, have been camped in front of my office since early afternoon,” Habib Kazdaghli, the dean of faculty at the University of Manuba, told AFP on Monday.
Tutors and union representatives voted at a general assembly on Tuesday to go on strike Thursday in protest at the incidents.
Several students and teaching staff said demonstrators were not enrolled at the university, and many were allegedly “agitators” from working-class neighbourhoods near the Manouba campus.
“This is not what the revolution was about,” one student said.
Two officials of the Islamist Ennahda party which swept to power in October 23 elections were involved in attempts to resolve the crisis.
Pro-headscarf demonstrators denied they were Salafists, a fundamentalist branch of Islam, and said they had not asked for mixed-sex classes to be stopped.
“We want two things: a prayer room inside the faculty and the right for girls wearing the headscarf to sit exams and attend classes,” said Anis Rezgui, a first-year student.
The Rejuvenation Movement in turn expressed its condemnation of the deliberate occupation of the university campus and the detention of its staff by a group of unknown men from the university on Monday morning.
The statement also noted that "what happened is a flagrant assault on the university and the professors, and it is a part of a series of repeated practices by extremists trying to impose their extremist and strange views on the traditions of Tunisia by force and intimidation."
The movement also expressed its "full solidarity with the dean, professors, administrators, and the students", asking the Ministry of Supervision and public authorities and the Constituent Assembly to intervene immediately and instill respect for the university's sanctity and laws, calling "all parties and components of civil society and national public opinion to put an end to these acts, which have been exacerbated since the election and became a real threat to the institutions and the national gains, what threats the country's present and future."
The leftist Socialist Party denounced the incident as "an assault on the sanctity of the faculty by a number of Islamist students, which prevents other students from taking their exams by force."
Mohamed Kilani, General Secretary of the party said: "What is going on in Manouba is an episode of the repeated infringements on the university and educational institutions which aims to impose an atmosphere of ideological, verbal, and physical terror."
He also called "the live democratic and progressive forces in Tunisia to unite and stand together to stop this behavior", while "putting the responsibility to face these practices on the National Constituent Assembly."
Tunisia’s Salafists have become more assertive in recent months, following the revolution that ousted a staunchly secular regime along with president Zine el Abidine Ben Ali following mass protests.
Visible again on the streets of Tunis and other major cities, their new assertiveness has led to a number of more or less violent clashes.
In the eastern city of Sousse earlier this month, some 200 Islamists stormed the university campus after a female student wearing a full face veil was not allowed to enroll.
On October 9 in Tunis, a mob of Salafists tried to attack the offices of private Nessma TV station that aired “Persepolis”, a French-Iranian animated film in which God is represented as an old bearded man.
“What’s happening is that many good and bad things that had been repressed resurface since the revolution,” said Tahar Chikraoui, history professor and film critic.
“We have extremists, manipulators, people who are learning what democracy means. ... And then there is a power vacuum. All this is not really surprising.”