It is no surprise that Tunisia’s prisons are overcrowded as it’s relatively easy to end up there. In one prison BBC met two women who were locked up for smoking a joint. The dreary reception hall of Menouba prison lies between the gates of freedom and captivity. From one corner, the squeal of a young woman being embraced by her visiting family echoes through the room. From another, a muffled sob interrupts the tapping rain. The tearful woman paces, then sits, and puts her head in her hands. She appears broken and lost.
She says her name is Arouseya Mezouzi and she misses her three children who are now staying in an orphanage. It is her third week in detention on charges of smoking marijuana – locally dubbed “zatla”. Her husband is also in jail for drugs. Tunisia’s longstanding anti-drug law slaps offenders with a minimum, automatic one-year jail term. “In most countries, they don’t have these cases against drugs – it’s just us,” Arouseya says.
“It’s destroyed so many people. A whole family has been destroyed for something like this? Children are in orphanages, schooling is disrupted, and their future is lost,” she says. A short walk away, there’s a new facility that could be mistaken for any nursery. It is seen as one example of improvements being made here. In the living room there’s a TV, some toys scattered around and children taking their first steps. The youngest amongst them is a one-month-old girl wrapped in a blanket, lying wide-eyed in a crib.
This house provides a safer space for incarcerated mothers who have their children with them, and for others, like Amel, who are expecting. She has been detained for five months on accusations of forging a signature, and says she is innocent. “Cases like forgery should be resolved quickly by experts on the matter.
“The slow judicial process affects us. Why should my child be born here? They call this place a solution, but it’s still prison,” she says. Another prisoner, Amira – not her real name – seemed more fearful of her neighbourhood finding out that she was in prison and pregnant, than she was of the state that jailed her for “smoking half a joint”. She says her family has told everyone that she had moved to a different city. She says she was so shocked by her incarceration.
