Tunisian Women Demonstrate for Their Rights

Thousands of Tunisians demonstrated in the country's capital Tunis, late Monday for women's rights in the biggest show of force by the opposition since April.

Two demonstrations, one authorised and the other not, were held to support the withdrawal of a planned article in the constitution backed by the Islamists that refers to "complementarity" and not equality of the sexes, AFP has reported.

Thousands of people assembled opposite the parliament building in Tunis after the breaking of the Ramadan fast, while several hundred defied a ban to gather on the main city centre Habib Bourguiba Avenue. According the French news agency, another demonstration was attended by about 1,000 people in Sfax, 260km south of the capital.

The demonstrators, mobilised by feminist groups, human rights and opposition organisations, were celebrating the anniversary of the promulgation of the Personal Status Code (CSP) in 1956 under Tunisia's first President, Habib Bourguiba.

Tunisian women are reportedly rising up against the proposed article in the new constitution seen by many as an Islamist ploy to reverse the principle of gender equality that made Tunisia a beacon of modernity in the Arab world when it was introduced nearly six decades ago.

The National Constituent Assembly, elected after the downfall last year of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, is currently drafting a new national charter.

The NCA parliamentary committee adopted last week a proposed article - that must still be ratified at a plenary session of the interim parliament - that activists say would compromise rights enshrined in the CSP.

The 1956 code, the first of its kind in the Arab world, abolished polygamy, under which Muslim men are allowed to have as many as four wives, and the practice of repudiation, under which husbands could divorce simply by saying so three times.

At the same time, it instituted not only judicial divorce but also civil marriage.

It is a system now deeply rooted in Tunisian society, where women are active in all sectors of society.

AFP> said that the offending article stipulates that the state guarantees "the protection of women's rights... under the principle of complementarity to man within the family and as an associate of man in the development of the country".

Source: http://www.tripolipost.com/articledetail.asp?c=1&i=9026

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