More than 500 people forced their way into the Place d'Italie in Paris on May 1 to shout out their anger and determination: "Freedom for Ahmed Souab! Freedom for political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in Tunisia". Lawyer, former judge and a pillar of Tunisia's independent judiciary, Souab is today imprisoned on the orders of a government that uses the law as a truncheon. Like other prisoners of conscience, his detention, fabricated by fraudulent accusations, is not a news item: it is the symptom of a state that is abandoning the law to install its authoritarian reign.
Tunisians living in France, including members of the families of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, mobilized to join the tens of thousands of demonstrators who formed the May 1st procession. The demonstration was more than just a juxtaposition of slogans and flags: it embodied, in the heart of Paris, the solidarity of diasporas and exiles, the voice of the oppressed and activists, the echo of a youth ready to take up the torch of struggle. With every step, the same certainty resounded: defending Ahmed Souab and the other political prisoners means defending rights and freedoms, the separation of powers, democracy and human dignity. It means refusing to let arbitrariness triumph over the principles of the rule of law.
Since April 21, Souab has been subjected to the intimidating methods of an executive that tolerates neither criticism nor counter-power. Intersection, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have said it all: this summary trial has only one aim - to silence those who oppose the confiscation of justice. Behind a name, an entire system is shaking: the same system that criminalizes NGOs, suspends Parliament and dismantles the independence of judges.
On May 1st, the demonstrators once again became actors in history: they held up their placards, banners and T-shirts, and brought to the forefront of public debate a cause that was supposed to have been forgotten. Between the cries of "Justice for Souab!" and "Long live free Tunisia!", a fundamental confrontation was played out: that of a determined civil society against a power that stifles all dissent.
A symbolic date, May 1st is more than just a protest: it's a founding act, a unique moment of solidarity and crossroads of struggles. Bearing the heads of those detained in the so-called "plot against state security", journalists, lawyers, civil society and migration activists, and other citizens unjustly imprisoned for a year or more, they proved that the Tunisian struggle is also a universal one: for freedom of expression, for an independent judiciary, for human rights.
The CRLDHT will not give up until Ahmed Souab and the other unjustly imprisoned prisoners are released, and until Tunisian justice remains muzzled.
May 1, 2025 marks the beginning of a new sequence of resistance: the moment when the Revolution regains its voice, where it was intended to be buried. Our cry is simple: without justice, there is no peace; without freedom, there is no democracy. We are here to remind you of this, again and again, until victory is achieved.
