Several activists of the General Union of the Tunisian Students were suspended from their studies earlier in February because of their struggles in the students unions for better condition of education and student democratic rights. Later on, after a general strike in the universities, many students were expelled out of their studies and 3 of them went into jail under convictions of disturbing the security and causing violence in the universities. Now, a total of 30 students are under threat of persecution. As an action of protest, many of the members entered in an open hunger strike till the release of their companions.

The World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) salutes the student movement in Tunisia, especially those who sacrificed their personal studies and insisted on the rights of young people in proper education and under proper conditions. 

WFDY also condemns the policies of fear spread by the Tunisian government in order to prevent students from organizing and prohibit the union movement of the students.

WFDY calls on all of its members to show solidarity with the student movement in Tunisia and try to organize activities and statements in solidarity with the persecuted and expelled students. 

WFDY reasserts its position in the right of youth, including students to organize in union and organizations in order to struggle for the right of public education for all the young people, and with the democratic rights of organization and political freedoms of the youth in Tunisia and worldwide. 

We will follow up with concrete solidarity actions in the upcoming weeks as one more moment of common struggle and international solidarity.

On March 13, in the framework of WFDY member SDAJ Germany (March 14 and 15), a seminar of WFDY regional commission of Europe and North America, will take place to discuss the concrete developments of Secondary, Professional and High Education in the region and struggle for a full public, free and quality education for all (idea that is clear by the slogan of WFDY campaign “We struggle for a Public, Free and Quality Education for all!”, which is also the slogan for this event).

The imperialist forces manipulate education in order to make it one of their most powerful instruments for domination and exploitation. Imperialism bans the access of millions of people to education, because it knows that uneducated people are easier targets of exploitation. This is why there are so many analphabet people in the world, even though four days of money spent on weapons would be almost enough to pay all these people studies.

Moreover, in many parts of the world, imperialism imposes processes of partial or full privatization of education, transforming what is a universal right of each human being into a millionaire business that keep enriching a few imperialist groups throughout the world.

However, this is not a linear process. Many times imperialism’s goal is not only to exclude, and behind statistics of high percentages of young people attending school, the fact is that many of those people are not getting wide and emancipator knowledge. In fact, many schools and universities are more and more, factories of non-scientific formation, which goal is only to assure that people have enough formation to keep producing at a high level and where historical truth and human values are despised or subverted in order to create a selfish, reactionary and unable to resist world population (as the Bologna process is clearly showing).

The positive experiences in socialist and other countries show that through democratic and universal access to public, free and quality education people live much better: they know their rights and they are much more able to defend the workers and youth’s conquests.

For all this, WFDY fully supports the struggle of the all the students against all economical and social obstacles to an Education for All!