We desire to affirm strongly and loudly our opposition to every form of political targeted killings and our support for all opposants who are victims of it. This petitin is freely inspired from the reading at the General assembly of the university of Tunis, this morning of 7th February 2013, of the following text.
In the name of all political opposants
Against the assassins of the CHildren of Spring who do not want to die
At the moment when anonymous guns execute a major political figure of tunisian society infront of his own house, it would be completely wrong to start speaking of the inevitable failure of revolutions and to be given over to retrospective prophets who predicted it all. Assassinated on his doorstep, Chokri Belaid is not the ghost of our melancholie. He was a lawyer. He was a man who was used to standing up because he had spent the greater part of his life standing up to defend , without distinguishing between them , Marxist intellectuals, democratic actors, militant islamists in each case where the dictatorship of Ben Ali prospered in denying their rights , in suffocating liberty and in consoludating his dictatorship. He was an opposition figure who became general secretary of a party with the mission of consistuting a patriotic and democratic current in Tunisian society. He was a couragous and engaged actor in the historical moment.
At the hour when one kills a man who was not acting differently from the way all citizens of the world act, not otherwise than we ourselves act or should act every day, it is the hour to say simple things. Political assassination destroys all possible worlds. It can simply not be tolerated. In the same way we should not continue to tolerate the Leagues of the Protection of the Revolution promoting fear and violence throughout Tunisia. It is imperative and urgent to demand that all Tunisians benefit from the protection they are owed. This protection must be guaranteed in particular for all the activists, intellectuals, artists and other actors of Tunisian civil society who are today the target of fanatical, violent and murderous actions.
In memory of Chokri Belaid … of his combat - endless like all of our own - and of his life, eternally fragile, like all of our own
Chokri Belaid at a meeting of the Popular Tunisian Front 7th October 2012;
Photo - Amine Ghrabi ° Flickr ° Creative Common (CC BY-NC 2.0)