08/10/2012 Political Affairs and Democracy
Strasbourg, 08.10.2012 - Anne Brasseur (Luxembourg, ALDE), rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Tunisia, said that she was deeply troubled and concerned by the recent press reports of the rape of a young Tunisian woman by police officers.
According to these reports, in early September 2012 a young Tunisian woman and her fiancé were stopped, in the middle of the night, by police officers, accused of engaging in “immoral behaviour”. It is alleged that the young woman was then raped by two police officers in their car, while a third police officer demanded money from her fiancé, whom they had handcuffed.
The three police officers were arrested following a complaint lodged by the young woman, who in turn was accused of “immoral behaviour”. If substantiated, this could mean six months’ imprisonment for both the victim and her fiancé.
“The fact that the two cases are being investigated by the same judge suggests, as claimed by representatives of Tunisian civil society, that this is an attempt to exert pressure on the victim to withdraw her complaint,” says Ms Brasseur. “The attempts to silence the victim by making her the accused bring back memories of a sinister past.” She welcomed, however, the way in which civil society had rallied round in support of the alleged rape victim.
“According to credible witness statements, rape as a means of punishment continues to be practised in Tunisia. In addition, several Tunisian NGOs accuse the police of harassing women because of the way they dress or on some other pretext. This only confirms the validity of the conclusions of the Assembly’s Resolution 1893 (*) (June 2012) on the need for urgent and radical police reform. Tunisians need a public service that protects them, and not a machine of oppression that they fear.”
(*) Resolution 1893 (2012), paragraph 10.2: “Far-reaching reforms in the areas of justice and security are necessary to restore the Tunisian people’s confidence in the judiciary and the police, do justice to the victims of the former regime, eradicate insecurity and impunity and thus re-establish the authority of the State”.