Tunisia Martyrdom

Author: 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Tha'âlibi - Editions: Héritage

This report is the presentation of the situation which is made for us by the institution of the French Protectorate and of our claims. No feeling of hatred or hostility towards the French people – we solemnly declare – has haunted – even for a moment – our minds or our hearts.
Our desire, at this hour of reparations for the great injustices of history, is to denounce to the people of France the regime that their government, without their knowledge and with the interested complicity of a very important part of the influential informants of public opinion public – politicians, financiers, publicists – has been inflicting on us for forty years.

It is a question of saving from bankruptcy, from economic and social death, a people which is only maintained by bursts of energy. It is a question of knowing if the springs of our social powers diverted from their natural goals for the profit of a handful, of speculators and adventurers without conscience, if these springs, already distorted, one intends to break them forever. Finally, it is a question of knowing whether the French people voluntarily intend to allow their government to commit, in the name of France, on our people, the iniquities, the injustices, the attacks that international law and international morality stigmatize and denounce to the reprobation and contempt of civilized peoples.