Civic Anti‑Racism Petition

We, the undersigned citizens,

Given the rise of racist ideologies in Northern countries, supported by their governments, parts of their elites and their financial powers, racism for which migrants in general, including Tunisian, Arab and African migrants, pay the price through discrimination, exclusion, stigmatisation, criminalisation and even murder,

Given the intensifying hate and racist campaigns on Tunisian social media against Black Tunisians and sub‑Saharan African migrants, campaigns that recycle the same wretched racist theories against the most vulnerable members of our society. These campaigns are fuelled by digital disinformation machines and private media outlets, and have been endorsed by a ruling regime that, since its statement of 21 February 2023, has promoted the conspiracy theory of “settlement” (al‑tawteen in Arabic), allegedly aimed at “changing the demographic composition”. By doing so, the regime has turned migrants and their supporters into an internal enemy, a scapegoat for its own political failures and reduced itself to a border guard for Italy’s neo‑fascist government.

Considering that hate speech, racism and discrimination deny human dignity, undermine our ability to live together, reinforce unequal power relations within society, and translate into violent, sometimes deadly, individual acts, as well as into repressive policies that imprison, starve and abandon human beings in border deserts solely on the basis of skin colour and origin.

And following the shocking and unjust first‑instance verdict against Saadia Mosbah, President of the Mnemty Association, who has been sentenced to eight years in prison and has been deprived of her liberty for over 700 days, along with prison terms and various fines for the association’s other activists, and a supplementary penalty barring only the Black defendants (and no others) from standing for election, all of this in retaliation for their anti‑racism work.

We hereby:

1. Strongly condemn all forms of discrimination and racism, no matter where they come from. We affirm that the political authorities bear direct responsibility for supporting and fuelling this racism, the authorities that should have been fighting it and criminalising it. We remind everyone that, in Tunisia, racism is an offence under Basic Law No. 50 of 2018 on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination.
2. Demand the release of Saadia Mosbah and Abdallah Said and  an end to the racist prosecutions and trials targeting anti‑discrimination activists. We also reject the criminalisation of the Tunisian Anti‑Racism Movement and the attempt to discredit it through money‑laundering charges, a tactic that has become noticeably common against the free press and against social, civic, political and solidarity movements, the most recent example being what is happening to the activists of the Sumud Flotilla.
3. Call on all citizens to take to the streets in a protest and solidarity march on Saturday, 11 April 2026 at 4:00 PM, starting from outside the headquarters of the National Union of Tunisian Journalists and heading towards Habib Bourguiba Avenue. This will be an opportunity to express our rejection of racist campaigns, speeches, policies and trials, and to reaffirm our commitment to the humanist values on which the Revolution of Freedom and Dignity was founded.