Desperate to be heard, Kasserine's unemployed attempt mass suicide

On October 20th, in Tunisia's central-west region of Kasserine, 27 unemployed graduates attempted to take their own lives by ingesting rat poison. All 27 were admitted to the hospital; within one week, all had been released.

The event flickered in and out of the news until it altogether faded.

Months earlier, Chedly Bouallegue, the former governor of Kasserine, had signed a record of proceedings with the group of unemployed graduates in question. The written agreement, to be implemented over a three-month period, promised to jointly seek solutions to the graduates' sustained joblessness. In many regions such as Kasserine, it takes university graduates an average of six years to find a steady job.

Three months passed and nothing happened. When the new governor, Hassen Khedimi, came into office in September, he refused to acknowledge the record of proceedings, his justification being that the agreed-upon period had already expired.

For the graduates, it was the breaking point.

'Plan Z'

"For these people, the act of suicide was their plan 'Z'. They had tried everything else," explains Tarek Barhoumi, a 34-year-old unemployed graduate from Kasserine.

Tarek, a soft-spoken man, is married with a two-year-old daughter. Both he and his wife have been unable to find stable employment since graduating from university.

Tarek is close friends with many of the people who attempted suicide. One of the young men is his nephew.

"Did they really want to die?" asks Tarek. "There are two aspects to this – I think they wanted to die, yes. But for them it was also a last, desperate attempt to tell the government authorities, 'we are here'."

The group's cry for help, however, has again proven futile - to Tarek's knowledge, not a single government official has contacted the group since all were released from the hospital.

Tarek says that he refused to participate in the act because he has a responsibility towards his family. That being said, he understands his friends' sense of desperation.

"Someone who does this has reached their limit, has reached the depths of moral poverty, mental poverty. This act is beyond material poverty."

Kasserine’s unemployment rate hovers around 27 percent, nearly twice that of the national average

The prolonging of discontent

This most recent event comes as part of a wave of popular discontent, sparked by the death of Ridha Yahyaoui in January, when the young man from Kasserine electrocuted himself while protesting his removal from a government employment list.

Kasserine, at the heart of the movement that galvanised the revolution in 2011, has since watched the rest of the country move towards the promise of democracy while it remains trapped in a seemingly hopeless cycle of marginalisation, unrest, negative media reporting and yet further marginalisation on all levels: political, economic, cultural.

Statistically speaking, the region's underdevelopment is striking - Kasserine's unemployment rate hovers around 27 percent, nearly twice that of the national average, while the infant mortality rate is six percent above the national average.

It's no wonder that activists from the region tend to reject the mainstream post-revolutionary discourse.

"I don't like it when people say 'after the revolution'. For [the people of Kasserine], it is not over," says Wajdi Khadraoui, an activist who has been very active in the sit-ins - demanding the government come up with employment solutions - since January.

"It's too bad [that the government ignores us], because we just want dialogue," he explains with a wry smile. "But it's always the same. Either we have conflict with politicians, or nothing at all."

The media often seems to portray Kasserine as an unstable region, filled with young, angry and unemployed men

An unfair standard?

The media often seems to portray Kasserine as an unstable region, filled with young, angry and unemployed men who either resort to criminal activity or wait in vain for the government to hand out jobs. But people here say this is an unfair and incomplete picture that dates back to the reductionist rural-urban dichotomies used by Bourguiba, Tunisia's first president, during his nation-building project.

Many Kasserine residents have tried to seek their own solutions, without waiting for the state. A large number of youths, finding few job opportunities in the region, opt for temporary, non-contractual work in Tunis and other coastal towns.

But instead of creating real opportunities for young people from the region, the rural exodus perpetuates existing inequalities and restricts temporary migrants to low-level and underpaid work.

"Businessmen from [the more highly developed coastal region] pay little for construction done by someone from Kasserine. Who works on the big construction projects? It's people from the interior," says Tarek.

Wihem, a 24-year-old with a biology degree, has been working without a salary for the past four months, in a private laboratory in Tunis. Previously, she explains, she worked in a plant nursery, with neither contract nor health insurance.

"The conditions were very dangerous," she says, pulling back her sleeves to show burn marks all along her forearms. "I had to use very harsh chemicals."

This is why she prefers to work in a lab - in her chosen field of work - even it means doing so as an unpaid intern.

"It's true that [employers] take advantage of people like me - they know we need work," admits Wihem. "But it's important for me to do something. I know, inside of me, that there is no real solution to my employment situation, but [I take jobs like this] in order to lie to myself, to keep hope alive."

The need for a different strategy

Though the sit-ins and surrounding social movement in Tunisia's interior regions show no signs of stopping, both activists and outside observers are aware of the limits of their chosen forms of protest.

"If the movement has not worked in the past six years, it's that something needs to change," says Ali Rabeh, director general of K-FM, a radio station in Kasserine.

"Six years of suicide attempts, six years of protests… six years are enough to generate the sort of passivity that we are facing right now. We need to find another form of action that is stronger than this."

Naim Mhamdi, an unemployed 27-year-old from Kasserine, agrees that the demonstrations will not help. "[The government] will tells us, 'it's not the time. There is terrorism. There are bigger economic problems.'"

But the way forward is unclear.

How, exactly, must the people of Kasserine overcome their troubles when faced with widespread corruption, a poor security environment, little government support and a lack of investment opportunities?

Must the whole of Kasserine be filled with superheroes; self-made entrepreneurs who continue searching for jobs and investment in the face of adversity? When a young man has held and lost six jobs in the past two years, none with a right to a contract, none meeting the minimum wage requirements, must he have the perseverance to apply for a seventh?

These are the questions that anyone fighting for Tunisia's future must ask. The current social movement is not achieving much in the way of tangible results, but why are the people of Kasserine expected to fight their problems alone?

While policy-makers continue to focus on mitigating threats to national security and boosting the national economy, neither issue can be de-coupled from the problem of regional inequalities.

Ali Rabeh speaks up: "I think we are faced by a crisis of unification. We [as a country, as Kasserine] will move forward to the day we stop preferring to be number one on a losing team and instead accept to be in sixth place on a winning team."

Just as Kasserine helped bring a dictatorship to its knees, continued social unrest risks knocking a budding democracy off its feet.

Emma Djilali is co-founder of Aatik. Follow her on Twitter: @emma_djilali