Tunisia today appealed to democracy and the defense of freedom during an intimate ceremony in memory of the 22 foreign tourists killed a year ago in an attack that sparked the jihadist nightmare in the country, plunged its economy and cracked their brittle transition politics.
Both values vertebrated speeches that the Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid, and French Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, delivered in the entrance hall of the Museum of Bardo , scene of the slaughter.
“Tunisia is committed to the path of democracy started in 2011″ after the revolt that ended the dictatorship of Zine el Abedin Ben Ali “and will fight with firmness and determination against who wants to threaten, “Essid said.
Ayrault praised, meanwhile, “the courage and the example of the Tunisian people” in defense of the only democratic transition that is still alive after the widespread failure of the so-called “Arab Spring “.
“This terrorism is defeated, is defeated by the courage of the Tunisian security forces for the determination of the Tunisian people who stood up to terror,” the minister said before urging resistance to fans.
“Against the Dark Ages, Tunisia responded with freedom, against terrorism Tunisia responded with democracy, facing Tunisia and France barbarism responded with brotherhood,” said Ayrault in memory Paris bombings of 2015.
Before the ceremony, which included several musical performances, the organization “We are All Bardo” placed in the museum garden a large Roman mosaic with the names and the faces of the victims of the slaughter.
“It worked throughout the year four workshops specialized in this art in El Jem,” he told Efe one of the promoters of the idea.
“It is a tribute to the victims but also a sign of the commitment of the Tunisian society rejects radicalism and is committed to democracy and freedom,” he added.
The work came the same Thursday workshop, located about 250 kilometers south of the capital, and arrived escorted by several trucks with the flags of the countries which expressed regret fatalities: Italy, Japan, Poland, France, Russia, Belgium, the UK, Colombia and Spain.
The attack Bardo, perpetrated by two Tunisians linked ideologically with the jihadist organization Islamic State (EI), was the first of three that shocked the Tunisian society in 2015.
According to the official story, the two young men came in and no one will stop on the premises of the museum and opened fire on a stuffed tourist bus before entrench themselves inside the building, shared garden entry to the national parliament.
Already in the halls, which house one of the finest collections of Roman mosaics of North Africa, took several hostages and clashed with security forces before being killed.
Three months later, another young man, also allegedly trained by jihadists in neighboring Libya opened fire on the beach of a luxury hotel in the coastal town of Susa and killed 38 foreign tourists, most of them British.
In October, a kamikaze-also linked to the EI- exploded a bomb belt to pass a bus from the Presidential Guard in the center of the capital, attack in which twelve servicemen died.
The attacks, which were a blow to the economy-the tourism is one of the pillars of the country, they revealed also the lack of preparedness and the mistakes of forces Tunisian security, unable so far to control a threat that continues to grow.
A sense of vulnerability that worsened two weeks ago, after dozens of jihadists, some of them infiltrated from Libya tried unsuccessfully to storm a police station and barracks in the border city Ben Guerdan, capital of trafficking in the country’s south.
In the subsequent battle and chase killed seven civilians, 11 police and military, and a total of 49 jihadists, although it is believed that about a hundred managed to escape towards Libya and the Algerian border.
Since the fall of the dictatorship of Zinedin the Abedin Ben Ali, in January 2011, the southern regions of Tunisia have become a meeting place for jihadists from all points the Sahel.
Most of them are concentrated in the, neighboring Algeria, and also to face the Tunisian security forces often travel to Libya mountainous region of Kasserine to join the armed struggle .
Tunisia, where the Islamist fanaticism is rooted from the eighties, is now the first state in the world in number of citizens who have joined EI in Syria and Iraq, with nearly 5,000 volunteers according to official figures.
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