TUNISIAN POLICE used tear gas to disperse hundreds of Islamists who were protesting against a decision by a television station to broadcast Persepolis, an award-winning animated film which they said denigrated Islam.
Tension is mounting in Tunisia ahead of elections later this month – the first since the country’s uprising in January set off the wave of revolts in the Arab world.
In one of a series of incidents in recent days, police in the capital Tunis on Sunday clashed with a group of up to 300 Islamists who attacked the private television station Nessma after it screened Persepolis, an acclaimed Franco-Iranian film about the 1979 Iranian revolution. Reports suggested some members of the crowd tried to set fire to the building but were stopped by police, who arrested 40 people.
Separately, 200 protesters on Saturday stormed a university campus in the city of Sousse, south of Tunis, after a female student was denied a place because she was wearing a full face veil.
Based on a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, Persepolisdescribes the last days of the US-backed shah's regime and the subsequent 1979 revolution through the eyes of a young girl. The airing of the film in the local dialect was a first in Tunisia.
Nebil Karoui, the head of Nessma, said that after the film was aired last Friday, messages appeared on Facebook calling for the station to be burned down and its journalists killed.
“We are used to threats but what is alarming is that this time they put words into action,” Mr Karoui told the AFP news agency.
“Nessma is the progressive channel in the Maghreb and we will not be deterred. We will continue to programme whatever we choose. We did not kick one dictatorship out to bring in another.”
The main Islamist party, Ennahda, is expected to emerge as one of the biggest political groupings when Tunisians vote later this month to choose members of a constituent assembly charged with drafting a new constitution. Ennahda condemned the attack, calling it an “isolated incident” that should not provoke concern about growing radical influence.
“I am against infringing on the sentiments of people and their religion, but that does not stop us being completely against violence, whatever form it is in,” said an Ennahda official, Ali Larayad.
“We are in favour of peaceful protests to demand rights and on principle we condemn violence.”