Tens of thousands of workers launched a general strike in Gabes, Tunisia, Oct. 21, bringing economic activity to a complete standstill in the city. “Everything is closed,” Saoussen Nouisser, a local representative of Tunisia’s main labor union, UGTT, told the press. The union has 800,000 members in this country of 12 million.
The action followed weeks of protests demanding the closure of a state-run phosphate chemical plant in Gabes that is poisoning residents and causing catastrophic damage to the land and nearby sea.
The city of 400,000 has seen a 70% increase in respiratory disease and a 50% increase in cancer since the factory opened in 1972. The pollution increased this year after the price of phosphate fertilizer skyrocketed and the plant speeded up production.
More than 200 people have been hospitalized in recent weeks, with videos of children struggling to breathe posted online. “She can’t walk more than two steps,” Rimel el-Haji told Reuters, describing how his 9-year-old daughter, along with dozens of other students, started gasping and walking slower about a month ago. She has been diagnosed with neurological damage.
A little over a mile away Amina Mansour suffers from throat cancer, one of seven people in her family with the disease. “This pollution is slowly killing us,” she said.
The plant has discharged more than 12,000 tons of waste daily into the Mediterranean at Chatt Essalam since it opened, leaving the sea bottom in the area lifeless and decimating fish stocks. Fisherman Sassi Alaya told Reuters his daily catch used to be worth $240. Now he’s lucky to make $20. “The sea was everything, our income and dignity,” he said. “Now, it’s a nightmare.”
The government has reneged on earlier promises to close the plant, with President Kais Saied calling phosphate a “pillar of the national economy.” On the eve of the general strike, Health Minister Mustapha Ferjani announced the government would at some time in the future build a cancer hospital in Gabes to deal with the rising cases.
Hundreds marched through Tunis, the country’s capital, Oct. 25, carrying banners and chanting slogans in solidarity with working people in Gabes, demanding the plant be permanently shut down and relocated.
Police have attacked the strikers in Gabes with tear gas, arresting close to 100. The country’s worsening economic situation and 40% youth unemployment has led to repeated demonstrations across Tunisia, posing the biggest challenge to Saied’s regime since widespread protests in 2021.
In 2011 a mass uprising of working people and youth forced Tunisia’s then-ruler, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, to flee to Saudi Arabia, inspiring protests throughout the region in what became known as the Arab Spring.