At least 2,000 protesters came out to mark the Martyrs’ Day holiday, which commemorates the 1938 suppression of pro-independence demonstrators by French colonial troops.
As they reached the interior ministry on Habib Bourguiba, they were met by police who fired tear gas to clear the crowd.
Police beat back groups of protesters with batons and chased stone-throwing youths down side streets in scenes reminiscent of the tactics used during Ben Ali’s 23 years as president, when Tunisia was a police state and freedoms severely restricted.
“The people want the fall of the regime,” protesters chanted, echoing the demand that was coined in Tunisia during the 2011 revolution and sparked the Arab Spring uprisings.
The moderate Islamist Ennahda party, which won post-revolution elections in October, is under pressure from secular parties to improve economic conditions and not give religion too prominent a place in public life.
Tunisia has changed enormously since the revolution, with a democratic system now in place and ordinary people able to speak and demonstrate freely for the first time in memory.
But the interior ministry decided to ban rallies on Habib Bourguiba Avenue in late March after local hotels, restaurants and other businesses complained that repeated protests and counter-protests were snarling traffic and disrupting business.
The ban infuriated opponents of the government who chose Monday’s public holiday to defy the police.
Numbers at the rally quickly shrank, and groups of dozens of demonstrators faced off with police. Reuters journalists saw protesters fainting from tear gas and others hobbling away with bruises.
Tunisia’s revolution ousted Ben Ali in January 2011. In October, Ennahda won more than 40 percent of seats in the constituent assembly in the country’s first free elections.
From the outset, Ennahda has faced strong opposition from secular parties and Tunisia’s powerful labor union, who fear it will impose conservative religious values on a country long known for its liberal and secular outlook.
The party, which leads the government in coalition with two secular groups, has tried to steer a middle course but the clashes are likely to cause a political backlash.
Protesters and opposition groups accused Ennahda of sending in masked thugs in plain clothes, who could be seen chasing protesters, to back police. An Ennahda official, speaking to the official TAP news agency, denied those claims and said its supporters were peacefully marking the day in another location.
