Dienstag, 16.10.2018 / 22:00 Uhr

Tunesien verabschiedet Gesetz gegen Rassismus

Von
Thomas von der Osten-Sacken

In dunklen Zeiten sind es die kleinen guten Nachrichten, die um so mehr Bedeutung haben. Wer weiss, welches Ausmaß Rassismus, vor allem gegen die Nachfahren ehemaliger Sklaven und Menschen aus dem subsaharischen Afrika in vielen arabischen Staaten hat, kann diesen Vorstoß nicht genug würdigen, vor allem angesichts der Tatsache, dass im benachbarten Libyen Afrikaner bis heute ganz offen als Sklaven gehandelt werden.

Damit auch gibt zum ersten Mal eine offizielle Vertretung eines arabischen Landes zu, dass es diesen Rassimus gibt. Bislang gefielen sich arabische Staatsführer immer gerne in der Pose der Unterdrückten und Opfer.

Einmal mehr macht Tunesien vor: Es geht auch anders. Mögen bald andere Länder in der Region mit ähnlichen Gesetzen folgen und sie dann auch durchsetzen:

In 1846, Tunisia became both the first Arab and the first Muslim country to abolish slavery. Now, it has become one of the first to criminalize racism.

On October 9, Tunisia’s parliament passed the “Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination” Act. The law, which defines and criminalizes racial discrimination, is an important step forward in defending the rights of the 10 to 15 percent of Tunisians who identify as black, as well as the country’s 60,000 sub-Saharan African immigrants.

The law originated in 2016 from the case of Sabrina, a black Tunisian who had been verbally abused on Habib Bourguiba Avenue in downtown Tunis. When attempting to report the crime, the police station turned her away due to “the lack of a specific law” against racism. Later, on December 25, 2016, three Congolese students were stabbed in a train station in Tunis. Amid demonstrations by civil society organizations, Prime Minister Youssef Chahed expressed his support for the law the next day.

These assaults on black Tunisians and migrants are not isolated incidents. The Al-Jazeera documentary “Tunisia’s Dirty Secret” details the racism many Tunisians face on a daily basis. Part of the film follows Hamza, who wore a hidden camera in his glasses. “Slave, have you been kicked out from your house?” one passerby sneers. “Have a shower you lazy bastard.” Some towns in the south of Tunisia, such as Sidi Makhlouf in Medenine, even have separate school buses for black children. Black Tunisians are also woefully under-represented in the public sphere. There is only one black member of parliament (Ennahdha’s Jamila Debbech Ksiksi) and the first black newsreader on state-run TV only appeared this year.