Thousands of Tunisian police, security forces protest

[Joanne98]

Source: Reuters

TUNIS Jan 22 (Reuters) - Thousands of Tunisian police, national guard, firemen and street cleaners thronged central Tunis on Saturday, distancing themselves from deposed president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in the largest demonstration for days.

The protest marks a turning point in the Tunisian uprising, throughout which Ben Ali loyalists in the police force fired on crowds, beat protesters with batons and shot teargas even at relatively small and peaceful gatherings.

"We came out today because we want national reconciliation," said a policeman who identified himself as Hatem. "Many people in the security forces were wrong... some ignorant people sullied our reputation ... People know now."

Tunisia's interior minister has said 78 people have been killed since the start of the demonstrations, but the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights put the number at 117, including 70 killed by live fire.



Read more: http://af.reuters.com/article/tunisiaNews/idAFLDE70L05W20110122

[blindpig]

1. The plot thickens... n/t

[Ghost Dog]

2. I was very impressed, and continue chewing over, Fidel Castro's insistance

on the importance of, essentially, being careful to respect and to get as many as possible of the military and other state security forces on your side, in any succesful revolution. See his "History will absolve me".

[felix_numinous]

3. That is precisely why

a revolution in this country would be a mess, unless the police, military-private, secret and federal, would somehow be on the side of the people.

[aquart]

4. Any significant "revolution" would simply break up the federal union.

Which is, despite stupidities, economically beneficient to all of us. So we'd get to become Europe before it decided to be a union. Or we would have another civil war with the "revolutionaries" fighting the people who want to keep the union intact.

OR, we would all pretend it didn't happen so that individual states would not have to vote to break away from a federal government which had been taken over by a coup as happened in 2000.

There are awful disadvantages to any of the options. If the federal government orders a state militia to fire on citizens of that state....