Channel One correspondent reports from the heart of Tunisia’s revolution

Presenter: In Algeria today, a demonstration by several hundred pro-democracy activists was dispersed, while neighboring Tunisia remains unsettled following the change of power and President Ben Ali’s flight from the country. Yesterday and today, demonstrations were held in the capital, Tunis, against the national unity government formed after the previous regime collapsed. Members of the security forces who took part in the violent suppression of earlier demonstrations against the now-fled president also took part in these days’ demonstrations calling for a different regime. Our correspondent in Tunis, Gideon Kouts, reports from the heart of the turmoil, from the streets of Tunis.

Gideon Kouts: Tunis at 6:00, after the revolution; the morning after the curfew, after a night of tank fire at hostile militias. Hundreds of demonstrators, stubbornly demanding the removal from the new government of all the leaders of the old regime, set out on their daily march along Habib Bourguiba Avenue. The police push them off the avenue, and at the corner people stop for interviews and arguments.

Demonstrator: We want to work! We want to exist!

Woman demonstrator: All the members of the party, the RCD party, are still here. We have to fight to… to get them out. Well, the problem is that the ministers who are part of the opposition have taken positions that are not really important in the Tunisian government.

Gideon Kouts: They set off marching again from another direction; the hundreds turn into thousands. The police, still unused to this sudden freedom, quickly lose patience. Now the police attack is massive and brutal. They beat people with batons; warning shots ring out in the air; tear-gas grenades fly. The throat is parched, the eyes are watering. We run close together down the narrow street, left, right. Breathing is labored; the burning is unbearable.

Gideon Kouts (to camera): We’re starting to breathe again after the tear gas. For now, everything has passed safely, but what will happen today?

Gideon Kouts: We find a way across to Freedom Street, Avenue de la Liberté.

Demonstrator: But yes, this is a demonstration by this youth, a demonstration that we called and named the demonstration and this Jasmine Revolution, jasmine, jasmine—we can smell the scent of this flourishing youth. All the Maghreb is now about to leap onto a volcano, I say a volcano!

Interviewer/speaker: The smell we’re breathing isn’t the smell of jasmine; it’s the smell of tear gas!

Demonstrator: No, no, not at all! No, no, it’s the scent!

Demonstrator 2: There are free people! There is no jasmine! It isn’t called the Jasmine Revolution; it’s a revolution of free men!

Demonstrator 3: It’s the people’s revolution, for freedom, for freedom of expression!

Gideon Kouts: And the demonstrators return once again, taking cover in public transport.

Gideon Kouts: Lotfi takes me to the wealthy district of La Marsa to see the crowd’s revenge against the ruling clan. Along the way, the charred skeletons of cars used by the brutal secret police to eliminate citizens who did not toe the line. And on the shore, the unfinished skeleton of a ship-shaped house built by Imad Trabelsi, the brother of the president’s wife, who was killed in the unrest. This is the area of the president’s wife’s family, who sold public land to real-estate developers and pocketed millions.

Resident: There’s a housing development over there, across from the Golden Tulip, that belongs to the Trabelsis. Well, they destroyed everything—the nature, the forest—and there you have it. They took all the beautiful scenery instead of leaving it for everyone, and there you have it. There’s no forest anymore, no green space, nothing at all, in fact.

Gideon Kouts: And opposite is what remains of the splendid villa of Belhassen Trabelsi, who survived and was arrested. The crowd vented its fury there; everything was taken. Today it is a place of pilgrimage, where people tread on shattered glass. Roger Bismuth, president of the small Jewish community and a senator close to the old-new prime minister, receives us in the spacious office of the import-export company he runs.

Roger Bismuth: I thought I was absolutely aware of a great many things, and I’m discovering, really to my surprise, that I didn’t know a hundredth of what was going on in the country. It was… it was, what can I say, a Mafia-like organization that destroyed and ruined the country. The Jewish community has never had a problem, if you like. They even marched past the Great Synagogue three times; not a word was said. Perhaps some people will have been frightened and will leave, I mean. Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people.

Gideon Kouts: The tank commander guarding the abandoned presidential palace poses for a photograph with me, smiling. One more symbol of the first popular revolution in the Arab world. Gideon Kouts, Channel One, Tunis.