[ad_1]
Tahar Jaouebi watches from a beach south of Tunis, remembering the 1990s, when the water was still clean enough for swimming.
“Now I can’t swim, and neither can my son,” he said.
Jaouebi, 47, is one of hundreds of protesters who formed a human chain over the weekend to highlight the pollution plaguing the south coast of the Tunisian capital.
Maryam Chergui, a 37-year-old resident of the Ezzahra district, deplores the state of the water nearby.
“It’s very dirty,” she said. “There are shells and dead fish. We are not taking care of our environmental wealth.”
Organizers say some 3,500 people joined the protest along the beaches between Rades and Borj Cedria, a 13-kilometer (eight-mile) stretch of sheltered coastline home to around 300,000 people.
The Action Citoyenne campaign group has been fighting for two years against the pumping of wastewater – sometimes untreated – into the sea.
Tunisians demonstrate along the beaches south of Tunis on September 12, 2021. Some activists have been fighting for two years against the pumping of wastewater – sometimes untreated – into the sea. By ANIS MILI (AFP) He organized the demonstration on Sunday to “condemn the deterioration of the state of our sea, polluted by bacteria and become a danger to health,” said group chairman Doniazed Tounsi.
Ines Labiadh of the FTDES rights group said it was “the longest human chain in Tunisian history” where a 2011 revolution overthrew dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and triggered uprisings in the Arab world.
The FTDES distributed placards recalling article 45 of the post-revolutionary constitution of the country, guaranteeing “the right to a healthy and balanced environment”.
” Ecological disaster ”
Hammam Lif, nestled further around the bay between Tunis and the Cap Bon peninsula, was once frequented by the Beys, Ottoman governors of Tunisia who built magnificent palaces nearby.
Tunisians form a human chain along the beaches south of Tunis on September 12, 2021. Wastewater from the southern suburbs of the capital flows through a wadi into the sea, which activists say is now full of microphones – harmful organisms. By ANIS MILI (AFP) More recently, in the 1990s, “poor and middle-class Tunisians came to these beaches to swim because they are easily accessible by train,” Labiadh said.
But today, black, smelly sewage from the southern suburbs is draining through a wadi into the sea, which activists say is full of harmful microorganisms, including streptococci and fecal coliforms.
Labiadh says the coastal suburbs south of the capital face the worst marine pollution in Tunisia.
“According to international standards, there shouldn’t be more than 500 bacteria per 100ml,” says Tounsi. “There are 1,800 here. It’s an ecological disaster.”
Labiadh accuses an influx of new housing not connected to the national sanitation network, faults in the network itself and the pollution of leather and tomato processing factories near the port of Radès.
The Ben Ali regime has overseen a great surge in industrialization, especially in the coastal regions of Tunisia.
But the 2011 revolt sparked a decade of political turmoil, with environmental safeguards being dropped.
Pollution along the southern coast of Tunis continued despite promises by officials in the 2018 local elections.
Badredine Zbidi, the deputy head of the municipality of Ezzahra, says the crisis is having economic consequences for the region.
“People don’t even eat the fish,” he said.
“The sea is a gift from God, but we are victims.”
ak-fka / by / lg
Source link
