TUNIS: Police and mourners clashed at the mass funeral yesterday of secular opposition leader Chokri Belaid, whose assassination has plunged Tunisia deeper into political crisis.
Braving chilly rain, at least 50,000 people turned out to honor Belaid in his home district of Jebel Al-Jaloud in the capital, chanting anti-government slogans.
It was Tunisia’s biggest funeral since the death of Habib Bourguiba, independence leader and first president, in 2000.
Violence erupted near the cemetery as police fired teargas at demonstrators who threw stones and set cars ablaze. Police also used teargas against protesters near the Interior Ministry, a frequent flashpoint for clashes in the Tunisian capital.
Tunisia, cradle of the Arab uprisings, is riven by tensions between dominant conservatives and their secular opponents, and by frustration at the lack of social and economic progress since President Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali was ousted in January 2011.
Belaid’s assassination has shocked a country which had hitherto experienced a relatively peaceful political transition.
“The people want a new revolution,” shouted mourners in Tunis, who also sang the national anthem.
Crowds surged around an open army truck carrying Belaid’s coffin, draped in a red and white Tunisian flag, from a cultural center in Jebel Al-Jaloud toward the leafy Jallaz cemetery, as a security forces helicopter flew overhead.
“Belaid, rest in peace, we will continue the struggle,” mourners chanted, holding portraits of the politician killed near his home on Wednesday by a gunman who fled on a motorcycle.
Some demonstrators denounced Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of the ruling Ennahda party. “Ghannouchi, assassin, criminal,” they chanted. “Tunisia is free, terrorism out.”
Police fired teargas to disperse anti-government protesters throwing stones and petrol bombs in the southern mining town of Gafsa, a stronghold of support for Belaid, witnesses said.
Crowds there had chanted “The people want the fall of the regime,” a slogan first used against Ben Ali.
In Sidi Bouzid, the southern town where the revolt against the ousted strongman began, about 10,000 marched to mourn Belaid and shout slogans against Ennahda and the government.
Banks, factories and some shops were closed in Tunis and other cities in response to a strike called by unions in protest at Belaid’s killing, but buses were running normally.
Tunis Air suspended all its flights because of the strikes, a spokesman for the national airline said. Airport sources in Cairo said EgyptAir had canceled two flights to Tunisia after staff at Tunis airport joined the general strike.
No one has claimed responsibility for the killing of Belaid, a lawyer and secular opposition figure.
“Hope still exists in Tunisia,” Fatma Saidan, a noted Tunisian actor, told Reuters at Belaid’s funeral. “We will continue to struggle against extremism and political violence.”
She called for national unity, saying: “We are ready to accept Islamists, but they don’t accept us.”
