{"id":243484,"date":"2026-09-06T20:07:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T18:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/north-africa\/tunisia\/tunisias-rights-defenders-decry-civil-society-crackdown\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T20:07:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T18:07:22","slug":"tunisias-rights-defenders-decry-civil-society-crackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/north-africa\/tunisia\/tunisias-rights-defenders-decry-civil-society-crackdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Tunisia&#8217;s Rights Defenders Decry Civil Society Crackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"31\"><em>Five years into the authoritarian rule of Tunisian President Kais Saied, Human Rights Watch and other activists warn that Tunisia&#8217;s once vibrant civil society is in danger of being completely stifled.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"51\">&#8220;Most civil society organizations are in a state of shock today,&#8221; Messaoud Romdhani, a Tunisian human rights activist told DW. &#8220;Those who <a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/tunisia-jails-opposition-leaders-for-up-to-66-years\/a-72286203\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">criticize<\/a> the authorities or situation in <a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/tunisia\/t-19111656\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tunisia<\/a> face widespread repression,&#8221; he explained, adding that &#8220;most have been accused of money laundering, which leads&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202609020068.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 North Africa <a title=\"Tunisia\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/north-africa\/tunisia\/\">Tunisia<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Five years into the authoritarian rule of Tunisian President Kais Saied, Human Rights Watch and other activists warn that Tunisia&#8217;s once vibrant civil society is in danger of being completely stifled. &#8220;Most civil society organizations are in a state of shock today,&#8221; Messaoud Romdhani, a Tunisian human rights activist told DW. &#8220;Those who criticize the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":243485,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/download\/pic\/main\/main\/csiid\/00660151:543629e7dbfbad0633d5a817ce798f4b:arc614x376:w1200.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[642],"tags":[258,256,8227,14409,8543,5101,257,5100,7120,254,653,6684],"class_list":["post-243484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tunisia","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-civil","tag-crackdown","tag-decry","tag-defenders","tag-news","tag-rights","tag-society","tag-south-africa-today","tag-tunisia-news","tag-tunisias"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/download\/pic\/main\/main\/csiid\/00660151:543629e7dbfbad0633d5a817ce798f4b:arc614x376:w1200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}