The police violent the journalist, and prevented him from covering gatherings against President Kaïs Saïed, Friday, January 14, report the French daily and the association of foreign correspondents in North Africa.
Le Monde with AFP
The correspondent of the daily Liberation in Tunisia was beaten on Friday by the Tunisian security forces. “As he covered a demonstration against President Kaïs Saïed Friday, our correspondent Mathieu Galtier was violently struck by several policemen. The direction of the newspaper firmly condemns this aggression”, reacted release, on his site .
Events against the President were organized Friday in the Tunisian capital, also marking the eleventh anniversary of the fall of the Tunisian autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. The rallies, prohibited by power, have been brutally dispersed by the security forces, giving rise to scenes of violence rarely seen in the capital. “Mathieu Galtier filmed the muscular arrest of a protester with his cellphone when he was taken over by a policeman in uniform”, reports liberation.
Struck “in all directions”
The correspondent, cited by the newspaper, explains to have immediately identified as a journalist in French and Arabic, while the policeman was trying to take his phone. The journalist was then “raised and dragged between two vans”. He relates:
“They started to hit me in all directions, I was on the floor, curled up in a fetal position, I shouted that I was a journalist. One of them has sprayed me with gas overhead. They kicked me. Finally, they took my phone, my press card and they left me there. “
Once treated by the firefighters, the correspondent asserts that his business has been returned to him, with the exception of his phone’s memory card on which his images and videos were recorded. The journalist, installed for six years in Tunisia, was prescribed “fifteen days of rest”. In particular, a doctor has seen “an abortion of 10 centimeters in diameter at the forehead”.
The association of foreign correspondents in North Africa (NAFCC) also condemns, in a statement, “the violence exerted by the security forces on journalists who covered the mobilizations” in Tunis where has been reached “a level of Violence ever known since the creation of NAFCC in 2014 “. “A photographer has been clubbed and a jostled video journalist and prevented from filming,” adds the association, who asks for the opening of a survey “without delay”.