Veteran political activist Ezz El-Din Al-Hazqi stands among the protesters in the street, raising the victory sign, but behind his smile, captured by cell phone cameras, his story resonates with double suffering. A few weeks before his last public appearance at a civil society march on July 25, demanding freedoms and protesting against the economic situation and poor public services, the results of medical examinations revealed that he was suffering from cancer, after which he began a complex treatment journey that required a lot of patience and strength.
The biggest challenge facing Al-Hazqi, who is 82 years old today, lies in his ability to hold himself together morally and physically, due to his double ordeal. On the one hand, there is no news about his son, the opposition leader in the National Salvation Front, Johar bin Mubarak, who has been in prison since 2023 on charges of conspiring against state security, on a regular basis. On the other hand, his daughter, the lawyer and activist Dalila Mosaddeq Ben Mubarak, was no longer with him after she was forced to seek refuge in exile in France due to her fears of being thrown into prison.
Dalila Mosaddeq is not an exceptional case. Although Tunisia is officially classified by the European Union as one of the safe destinations whose nationals find it difficult to accept asylum applications, the wave of departures has doubled among the ranks of the opposition, opinion leaders, activists, and journalists, due to what they describe as restrictions on freedom of expression and the risks of being stopped by the security services and arrested at any moment.
"Part of the political struggle"
When DW met Arabiya Al-Hazqi, he was torn between mixed feelings because he was unable, due to his health problems, to visit his son Jawhar, who went on frequent hunger strikes more than once, after the authorities transferred him to more than one prison far from the capital. He also only has his cell phone to communicate with his daughter thanks to the available applications. The last thing he received from his son was his complaint about the intense heat wave that swept the country last July and exacerbated the difficult conditions of prisoner detention.
In a tone not devoid of firmness, Al-Hazqi spoke to DW Arabia, saying: “My son is in prison and my daughter is in exile... I understand the meaning of prison, but there is no other option. For 60 years I have been struggling... and this is part of the struggle.”
Al-Hazqi was among the first politicians that DW Arabia met years ago during a hunger strike carried out by opposition politicians, in protest against President Kais Saied’s announcement of his decisions on July 25, 2021, which paved the way for the establishment of a new ruling system with enhanced powers for the head of state, a step that Saied says is necessary to address chaos, corruption, and the dangers of disintegration of state agencies, while his opponents describe it as a “coup.”
Despite his double ordeal, the veteran activist today does not hide his satisfaction with the transformation that the streets are witnessing from a state of “restlessness to anger,” as he says, five years after the decisions of July 25. He comments on this: “There is a wide understanding that the country is in a state of disintegration. What I was calling for before is being repeated by the new generation today, and this means that the transitional process has been achieved. This sends a message to the next generation, but as for me, I have left the future behind me. Today I realize that my struggle was not in vain.”
Between imprisonment and escape
But while Ezz al-Din al-Hazqi and the rest of the veteran politicians place high hopes on the rise of a new generation of young people, the wave of departures comes to reveal the narrow prospects in a country that is already witnessing an intense migration of cadres and university graduates, estimated at about 30 thousand people annually according to the National Observatory for Migration, in addition to irregular migration across the sea.
According to the expert on immigration and asylum issues, Ramadan Ben Omar, asylum requests from direct opponents of President Kais Saied had already begun after the decisions of July 25, 2021. Then they expanded to include journalists, civil society activists, politicians, and even ordinary citizens due to the situation that Tunisia has become after 2021.
Lawyer and human rights activist Dalila Mosaddeq, daughter of activist Ezz al-Din al-Hazqi, told DW Arabia about her choice of exile: “Exile is the last solution when a person has a choice between prison or leaving the country. Sometimes you may choose to stay and go through the prison experience, but that remains dependent on the family situation and the mental preparedness of each individual, knowing that exile is very harsh psychologically and socially.” However, the lawyer believes that behind the exile experience there are benefits that allow criticism clearly and without fear and revealing the status of political detainees to international public opinion, which constitutes one of the means of pressure, according to her assessment.
Opposition politician Riad Al-Shuaibi, a former leader of the Islamic Ennahdha Movement party, who in turn chose to leave Tunisia, also explains that there is justification for choosing exile “in light of the decline of freedoms and the expansion of the circle of violations against opponents, which makes the options narrow between surrendering to prison or leaving the country.” Al-Shuaibi adds in his comment to DW Arabia: "Of course, forced departure is not traditional migration; it is a search for protection and safety that is unfortunately lost in Tunisia. Just as Tunisian prisons have become filled with hundreds of political detainees and prisoners of conscience, dozens of political exiles have also joined the diaspora, who tell themselves to return every day, as soon as the reasons for their exile are removed."
Is Tunisia really a safe country of origin?
There are no accurate and up-to-date statistics on the number of people leaving Tunisia to seek asylum. However, the media and social media platforms regularly reveal the departure of an important number of actors in political and union circles and from the media and culture sectors in particular.
This wave conflicts with the issuance of a final European classification of “safe destinations” months ago that includes Tunisia, among other countries, and was approved by the European Union Council in February 2026.
Expert Ramadan Ben Omar told DW Arabia that "the classification process brings to mind similar classifications in the past, such as those that included the regime of the late Libyan Colonel Muammar Gaddafi or even the regime of the late Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali." In his estimation, these are classifications based on other priorities related to securing borders against migration flows and not on the actual presence of the state of law and institutions on the ground.
In practice, this classification, in addition to the requirements of the new European Asylum and Migration Charter that came into effect in June 2026, places many Tunisian asylum seekers at a crossroads in the EU countries, where they must provide irrefutable proof that they have been exposed to violations.
An investigative investigation conducted by the “Legal Agenda” website in Tunisia reveals that the rate of acceptance of Tunisians’ asylum applications did not exceed 4% in 2024, out of more than 14,000 applications.
Speaking to DW Arabia, the opposition politician in exile, Reda Al-Shuaibi, attributes these restrictions to what he calls “the calculations of European internal politics that prevent recognition of the reality of the dangerous situation in Tunisia that threatens the most basic human rights.”
