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My country’s international airport—as some may not know—has become the scene of the Tunisian regime’s score-settling with its opponents. Opponents are no longer banned from traveling; this is a move to promote the idea that they are “free.” However, if they do travel, they face difficulties at the airport, port, or border crossing in question.
I am one of those who are harassed when traveling from or returning to the country. Nonetheless, compared to other comrades, I can say that I am spoiled at the airport, where I enjoy relative “immunity” in that I am not insulted, threatened, or beaten like the others. Rather, I only experience “light” harassment that often ends with no damage save the moral harm embodied in the horrible feeling of being a second-class citizen deliberately given “special” treatment to humiliate her and make her feel that she is at the mercy of the regime and its apparatus.
On Saturday, November 28, this situation changed
and my “airport immunity” was lifted. I was returning from a long and tiring
journey to the
I hadn’t noticed anything unusual until after I
passed the border checkpoint. When I arrived at the baggage claim and customs
area, the airport was almost desolate.
Where were all the people? Where were my fellow
travelers?
They magically vanished! Instead of my fellow
travelers, I was looking at plainclothes police and several customs personnel.
I did not feel surprised up until that point, as I was used to having the
airport emptied for me so that travelers would not hear my loud protests over
the arbitrary actions taken against me.
I took my luggage and headed to the customs
checkpoint. A customs officer came and asked me to go to a small room, upon
which I immediately realized the function of that room and that I would, for
the first time in my life, experience physical inspection.
I protested strongly and asked the officers around
me about the reason for this new treatment and refused to enter the room. At
that point, a threatening and terrifying ring of police officers surrounded me.
The assistant airport director stepped forward and spoke to me rudely. He
raised his hand, threatening to hit me, and tried to push me into the room. He
said he was applying the “law” to me and “my kind,” uttering the last part with
disdain.
Neither my age nor my health would allow me to
continue resisting, so I entered the room. I was searched and then went out
after nothing was “found” on me.
When I came out, the assistant director and all
the policemen had already left. Their task was finished. They did not come with
the purpose of searching me for potential drugs but rather they—or, better
said: those who sent them—only sought to have me enter that room. But why?
If the intention was to make me aware of the
fact that I was no exception to the horror perpetrated by the regime against
free writers and human rights activists, I am fully aware of that. Indeed, I
continue to receive “anonymous” phone calls that wake me up in the middle of
the night delivering insults and threats against me. I have also been exposed
to smear campaigns in newspapers and on Web sites. Furthermore, the police
surrounded my home for days, as they did with many others.
If the intention was to spoil my joy for
receiving the Committee to Protect Journalists’ award and to inform me that I
was honored abroad while there was nothing but humiliation [for me] in my
country, let it be known that awards only give me joy as much as they are
recognition of the existence of writers and journalists in Tunisia who have not
been silenced by repression and intimidation. Let it be known that I am still
waiting for my true award, which is to see my country blessed with freedom. Let
it be known that I was dignified before I entered that pathetic room, and that
my feeling of dignity did not decline after I left it. A ring of policemen
cannot take away the honor I have received from my readership before anyone
else.
If the intention was to remind me of the threat
I received over a year ago that retribution will find me, my husband, and my children
in treacherous forms that employ, as usual, a state institution, security, or
other department, let those people know that I have not forgotten, for it is very
difficult to forget them. (I take this opportunity to ask them when they are
going to consider doing at least one good thing by which people can remember
them). No, I have not forgotten the threat that I am drawing attention to now
as I did then. However, it will not stop me from continuing my life; my fate is
in God's hands and no one else’s.
Read the original article published on Kalima in Arabic here.
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