“Life in our city has become unbearable. We breathe toxic air and eat unhealthy vegetables. Cancerous, skin, respiratory diseases, and osteoporosis are spreading among the population. Even the sea has been drowned in tons of chemical waste. And despite all these heavy prices we’re paying, the authorities show no concern for our suffering. Instead of thinking about saving us, they move toward drowning us in even more pollution under glamorous titles. And when we take to the streets to protest and demand a halt to the catastrophe, we are met with police repression and imprisonment, finding ourselves caught between two prisons: the prison of deadly chemical pollution and the prison of a state that preys on us.”
With these words, Reem (a pseudonym), one of the protesters against pollution in the Gabès Governorate, summed up to Daraj the dire environmental situation in her city and the way Tunisian authorities are handling the peaceful civil movement rejecting this condition and demanding the right to a clean environment and an end to the massive pollution affecting people by land, sea, and air.
“Policies of Intimidation”
On May 28, 2025, the Tunisian judiciary issued prison sentences ranging from two to four months against a number of protesters who participated in a demonstration in Gabès (southeastern Tunisia) on the 23rd of the same month. The protest denounced pollution and demanded the dismantling of the polluting units of the chemical complex and the halting of the green hydrogen project, which the city’s residents consider to be a cause of the environmental disaster they have endured for decades.
The detainees were charged with offenses carrying penalties of up to ten years in prison, including “being part of a gathering intended to disturb public order and commit a crime, violently assaulting a public official while performing their duties, and forming a criminal association.”
Mohamed Ali Rtimi, an activist in the environmental movement in Gabès and a member of the Damj Association, was one of three young men who were imprisoned. According to statements from activists on the ground, Rtimi was arrested when he intervened to protect a citizen who was being assaulted by security forces. He himself was subjected to severe physical violence and ill-treatment, leaving physical traces observed by his lawyers. The other two detainees also endured similar abuses during arrest and at the police station.
Aziz Chebbi, a member of Stop Pollution, an active movement in Gabès, told Daraj that “the charges against the detainees are part of the intimidation policy pursued by the authorities against civil society activists in general. In truth, it is an attempt to stifle opposing voices to the failed environmental policies that have drained Gabès for decades, and to intimidate local residents and pressure them into silence so the authorities can push through projects that will worsen the pollution disaster, especially green ammonia and green hydrogen projects. These projects were planned without consulting the local population, who already suffer in every way from the pollution caused by the presence of the chemical complex in the city.”
The Chemical Complex Crisis
Gabès is considered one of the most heavily polluted governorates in Tunisia, due to the chemical complex established in 1972 in the Shatt Essalam area, about four kilometers from the center of Gabès. The complex contains phosphate processing units, various chemical industries, and one of the largest natural gas storage facilities. The activities of phosphate extraction and transformation have led to a major environmental disaster in the region.
Since its establishment, the city has gradually turned into a pollution swamp, impacting land, sea, and the population. Before the 1970s, the region relied heavily on agriculture and fishing as main sources of livelihood, but this collapsed after the arrival of the chemical complex. The Gulf of Gabès has since become a dumping ground for chemical waste, approximately 29 tons daily of phosphogypsum is discarded into the sea, according to a report by the Protection of the Shatt Essalam Oasis association in Gabès.
This has severely harmed the Gulf’s biodiversity: the number of fish species has dropped from over 270 to only around 50 or fewer. Cancer and respiratory illnesses have spread dramatically, prompting residents to say that these diseases now threaten every family. Palm oases have also been negatively affected.
This is confirmed by a European Union report on the impact of pollution on the local economy in Gabès, prepared by European experts. The report revealed that 95 percent of the air pollution in the area comes from the chemical industrial complex and that its consequences are severe for both agriculture and human health. The air, the report stated, contains sulfuric acid, carbon oxide, and other toxic substances that destroy oases and cause diseases among residents. It also noted that the Gulf of Gabès region has seen an expansion of three-dimensional polluting industries.
Faced with this situation, environmental activists in Gabès have for years led protest movements demanding the relocation of the industrial units responsible for the surrounding heavy pollution to areas far from residential zones. After considerable effort, repeated mobilizations, and field pressure, the authorities eventually responded positively, issuing a governmental decision on June 29, 2017, to dismantle the units polluting with phosphogypsum emissions, in exchange for establishing other industrial units that meet environmental preservation standards.
The residents welcomed the decision with optimism, thinking a new era was about to begin and that their long struggle with pollution would gradually end. But nothing came of it: the decision remained ink on paper. This was expected, especially since the then-Minister of Local Affairs stated in 2018 that implementing the decision would take at least ten years. Then came President Kais Saied’s era, which cut off implementation entirely by issuing new decisions that boosted the activities of the polluting units.
A development plan was announced for the chemical complex that included increasing factory output to 80 percent of its design capacity by 2028. Then came the shocking decision for the residents of Gabès: phosphogypsum was removed from the list of hazardous waste and reclassified as a productive material, even though the Tunisian state had, on October 10, 2000, included phosphogypsum in the hazardous waste list.
Phosphogypsum is a byproduct of fertilizer production derived from phosphate. It primarily consists of calcium sulfate with varying amounts of phosphorus, fluorides, heavy metals, and sometimes naturally occurring radioactive materials like radium-226, which decays into radioactive radon gas, posing a danger to human health. Phosphogypsum may also contain toxic elements such as cadmium and lead, which can leach into soil and groundwater, polluting the environment and harming living organisms. It can lead to soil erosion and destroy the ecological balance in areas near storage sites. When discharged untreated into seas or rivers, phosphogypsum can alter water pH levels and kill marine life. Moreover, the leakage of toxic substances into groundwater can contaminate drinking water supplies.
Pressure to Cancel Energy Projects
On another front, the Tunisian authorities have signed agreements to implement green hydrogen projects on lands in the Gabès Governorate and nearby southern regions with several European countries. This follows the announcement in October of Tunisia’s national strategy for the production of green hydrogen, through which the country aims to produce 8.3 million tons of green hydrogen by the year 2025.
In light of the authorities’ obstinacy and their refusal to include local residents in shaping a development model that suits them, and given their disregard for the dangerous pollution levels in the city and the catastrophic consequences across all sectors, the people of Gabès have renewed their mobilization against the authorities. They are pressuring them to withdraw these projects, which locals see as compounding their existing crises, and are demanding the elimination of all sources of pollution that they are suffering from.
However, it appears that the current era will not tolerate the repetition of such movements. It will work instead to crush the voices that speak out powerfully against its projects, imprisoning and abusing them to intimidate the rest of the population. This would allow it to push its plans forward by force. This is confirmed by the security campaigns targeting environmental activists and the rapid issuance of prison sentences, which usually take much longer to process but are now being handed down at record speed. Additionally, the government’s preliminary decisions, such as removing phosphogypsum from the list of hazardous waste, fall within this same context. The state is trying to create a favorable legal environment that prevents activists and locals from mounting legal challenges, under the pretext that such decisions are backed by experts. In reality, however, the individuals overseeing these decisions belong to the ruling circles and are not independent experts.
