Last Updated, 3:44 p.m. Activists, bloggers and journalists in Tunisia posted a stream of images on social networks Friday, showing thousands of mourners packed into the largest cemetery in the capital, Tunis, for the funeral of Chokri Belaid, a leading opposition figure whose assassination two days ago triggered a wave of street protests against the Islamist ruling party.
Among those uploading images of the funeral — which took place as the police fired tear gas at protesters and cars were set alight during clashes outside the graveyard — were my Times colleagues Kareem Fahim and Tara Todras-Whitehill, Thierry Brésillon of the French news site Rue 89, and Tunisian activists including Selim Kharrat of the rights organization Al Bawsala.
In video streamed live during the funeral by the activist blogger Slim Amamou, the 2011 revolutionary chant calling for the downfall of the regime could be heard echoing around the graveyard.
A photograph in a set uploaded to Facebook by the blogger Mon Massir appeared to show that even the late opposition leader’s young daughter was forced to shield her face from the tear gas fired by the police.
After the funeral, as photographs uploaded by Mr. Amamou and the rights activist Amira Yahyaoui showed, the security forces enforced a ban on gathering on the main Avenue Habib Bourguiba in central Tunis.
Emna Chebâane, who also works with the rights organization Al Bawsala, posted video on Facebook showing how the police moved in to clear a small number of protesters from the avenue.
It was not hard to imagine what the kind of protest the authorities were concerned about might look like. Two days earlier, when an ambulance carrying Mr. Belaid’s body to the morgue had passed through the same street, thousands of protesters swarmed around the vehicle. Video posted on YouTube late Wednesday by Jadal, a Tunisian news site, showed that scene.
There were reports of protests in other parts of Tunisia on Friday, as many workers observed calls for a nationwide strike.
Video uploaded to YouTube by a blogger who said he was in the town of Sousse appeared to show the security forces, and officers in plain clothes, firing tear gas and dragging protesters away from a traffic circle pictured in a Wikipedia entry on the old town.
Two clips posted online earlier Friday by the same blogger appeared to show the divisions in Sousse, between supporters and opponents of the new government, which have emerged nationwide. One clip showed a loud march in favor of Ennahda, the Islamist party that now rules Tunisia; in another, a second group of protesters declared that they were committed to “bringing down the regime and avenging the death of Chokri Belaid.”
Video shot by bloggers for the independent news site Nawaat showed what they described as a demonstration in the city of Bizerte in honor of Mr. Belaid, outside the local headquarters of Ennahda. According to a description on Nawaat’s French-language live blog, the video shows an Islamist calling for calm and telling the demonstrators that the nation’s secularists have lost the struggle for power.
The Lede: Social Media Images From Tunisia, as an Opposition Leader Is Buried
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The Lede: Social Media Images From Tunisia, as an Opposition Leader Is Buried
