[The following declaration was issued on Dec. 20, 1985, by the Bureau of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. Since it was issued, General Union of Tunisian Workers leader Habib Achour has been sentenced to a year at hard labor and imprisoned in Sfax.]
At the end of October, the Tunisian government launched a large-scale offensive against the workers movement by attacking its predominant trade union organization, the Union Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens (UGTT - General Union of Tunisian Workers).
After several months of escalating repression, the government sent its police and the ruling party's militia to occupy the offices of the UGTT in most of the country, including the capital. Dozens of trade union cadres were arrested. The secretary general, Habib Achour, was put in "administrative detention."
Sections of the proletariat, especially in the southern part of the country, resisted the regime's offensive, unleashing a series of general strikes and organizing the defense of the trade union headquarters. They have unfortunately remained isolated, the response having been weak in the rest of the country. International solidarity, moreover, has been negligible.
bie.
This is why, after having launched its offensive, the government has been able to maneuver with the majority of the trade union bureaucrats in order to get them to accept its repressive intervention into the internal life of the union.
Although in "administrative detention," Habib Achour has been kept in the leadership of the union, but he has been replaced as secretary general. The autonomy of the UGTT has been flouted, and the regime will take advantage of this to push forward the projects that have been imposed on it by the International Monetary Fund and imperialism.
The situation, however, has not been stabilized. The workers retain a fighting potential that the trade union bureaucracy, moreover, has to take account of in its negotiations with the regime. More than ever, they need solidarity from the world workers' and democratic movements, especially from the trade unions.
The Fourth International calls on the workers' organizations to offer solidarity as soon as possible. It is necessary to call for the release of the jailed trade unionists, the evacuation of the repressive forces from the occupied union headquarters, and complete restoration of the independence and liberties of the trade union movement.