A 26-year-old Tunisian died on Saturday evening after he set himself on fire in protest of the government’s failure to provide compensation for his family.
Neji Hefiane, wounded in Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, after he suffered gunshot wounds to the head during the revolution of Jasmine, had received no compensation from authorities even though he was on an official list of people injured during the revolution, according to his sister Zohra quoted by AFP.
“My brother didn’t get anything he was entitled to, neither free healthcare nor a guaranteed job,” she said.
Hefiane died in a hospital on the southern outskirts of the capital Tunis on Saturday, his father said, after having set himself alight.
Hefiane’s story recalls the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, a street seller who died on January 4, 2011, at the age of 26, after setting himself on fire in protest of the system which would fine him, confiscate his produce and his scales and, on the last occasion, even wrestled him to the ground.
His family believes it was the humiliation, not the poverty that led Bouaziz to his suicide.
The Hefiane family believes that the death of their son is a result of injustice and marginalization.
“It was the injustice and marginalization he suffered that pushed my son to kill himself,” Bechir Hefiane, Neji’s father, said in a press statement.
Neji’s father Bechir wrote to President Kais Saied explaining his son’s case and asking him to intervene on behalf of the struggling family, “we’ve got no reply, even after my son’s death,” he added
More of those wounded in the revolution “are threatening to kill themselves”, said lawyer Lamia Farhani, president of the Aoufiaa (Faithful) association, in a press statement.
“The state and all the governments that have come and gone since 2011 are responsible for the state of despair and disgust among these people,” Farhani added in the same statement.
The early optimism of the Arab spring has stalled and some of its gains have been reversed in many regions in MENA.
Tunisia, the motherland of the Arab spring and the birthplace of Bouazizi was determinedly continuing on its path to democracy and freedom, despite fatal terrorist attacks and security fears.
However, in the last months, Tunisian President Kais Saeid’s decisions of suspending the parliament, dismissing his prime minister and assuming executive authority in a move opponents branded as a coup, raise questions about the future of democracy in Tunisia.
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