Tunisian activists who support restoring relations with Morocco or back Rabat’s position on the Sahara dispute fear authorities could use accusations of foreign collusion to silence them as a broader crackdown on civil society intensifies, a Tunisian rights source told Hespress.
The source, who requested anonymity, said government critics had faced growing judicial and administrative pressure and expressed concern that recent official rhetoric about foreign influence could provide grounds for further prosecutions.
Hespress could not independently verify that Tunisian authorities have specifically targeted activists because of their views on Morocco or the Sahara dispute. The source did not identify individual cases, arrests or formal charges directly tied to those positions.
The allegation comes amid a documented deterioration in Tunisia’s civic space. Amnesty International said in May that authorities had intensified action against non-governmental organizations through court-ordered suspensions, threats of dissolution and judicial harassment, often citing suspicious foreign financing and national sovereignty.
Human Rights Watch said repression under President Kais Saied had hardened into systematic pressure on civil society groups, journalists, political opponents and independent lawyers since he assumed exceptional powers in July 2021.
The Tunisian source also alleged that activists expressing pro-Morocco positions had faced coordinated online abuse from accounts aligned with Algerian interests. No evidence was provided establishing that Algerian authorities or intelligence services directed those campaigns.
Mustapha El Ayach, coordinator of the Moroccan Organization for Citizenship and Defence of Territorial Integrity, linked the reported pressure to the diplomatic rupture that followed Saied’s reception of Polisario leader Brahim Ghali in Tunis in 2022.
Morocco recalled its ambassador after that meeting, and bilateral relations have remained strained.
Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have separately documented suspensions and prosecutions affecting organizations working on human rights, migration, election monitoring, anti-racism and media freedom, placing the Morocco-related allegations within a wider campaign against dissent rather than establishing them as a distinct state policy.
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