Ancient beauty and modern strife collide at Tunis’s Bardo museum

posted on: Apr 16, 2015

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fter the security guard cursorily checks our vehicle for bombs we drive into the car park of the Bardo museum in Tunis. I had expected it to be almost empty. Instead there are half a dozen coaches parked outside and scores of children playing noisily in the entrance. They skip around the flowers on the ground. A family smiles as they pose for a portrait next to the memorial; the father jokes as he drapes the Tunisian flag around his head like a scarf. I cannot help but feel priggish: two weeks earlier, this was where gunmen killed 23 people.
The attack shocked the only country to have made a peaceful transition to democracy after the 2011 Arab uprisings. It has tested its fragile constitutional settlement; leftist groups boycotted the Bardo reopening ceremony the week before my trip, citing the presence of an Islamist party. Human rights organisations worry that terrorism will be used as a pretext to reinforce the structure of the police state that they say the revolution left largely unchanged.

Source: www.ft.com