The Euro Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) condemns the assassination of Chokri Belaïd and extends its deepest condolences and sympathy to his loved ones and to all democrats in Tunisia.
This tragedy has come about as a result of a government-sanctioned climate of intimidation and violence against the democratic movement in Tunisia.
The repeated attacks, coming from government officials as well as from some En-Nahdah leaders, singling out Chokri Belaïd as the leading light of the protests, gave way to his murderers. It is compounded by a biased use of the justice system and law enforcement which is seeing a single party seizing the main levers of state power.
This is not what the Tunisian people overthrew the Ben Ali regime for.
The first duty of the public authorities is clearly to bring those who ordered and carried out this abominable act swiftly to book.
But no less is it the responsibility of the Tunisian authorities to put an end to the climate of intimidation and violence they have allowed to evolve.
A failure to do so will throw any hopes of fair and democratic elections into doubt.