Tunisian teachers join in strike action amid rising protests

Fri, 07 Jan 2011

Tunis/Paris - A wave of protests in Tunisia over unemployment and living costs gained momentum Friday when teachers joined in a strike call.

Earlier, lawyers in the North African country had called a strike, as meanwhile criticism of government censorship surfaced.

The journalists rights group Reporters Without Borders has protested against the arrest of at least four bloggers in Tunisia, while the French daily Le Monde said that Tunisian authorities had blocked the entry of a correspondent sent to the country.

The protests were triggered by the desperate act of self- immolation of a man trying to scrape out a living selling vegetables on the street.

When authorities forced him to stop because he lacked a proper permit, the man, Mohamed Bouazizi, in late December set himself alight with petrol. He died earlier in the week, with thousands attending his funeral on Wednesday.

So far, two people have been killed in violence related to the protests over Bouazizi and the country's high unemployment and living costs.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/361131,join-strike-rising-protests.html.