Tunisian state of emergency forces holidaymakers to flee

Thousands of holidaymakers were ordered out of their hotel rooms in the early hours yesterday as travel Rosetta Stone Languages firms began the airlift of almost a third of 5000 UK tourists in Tunisia after the country’s president stepped down amid escalating violence and a state of emergency. As the tourists’ suitcases were loaded on to coaches, young men in the streets burned property and cars in protest against the authoritarian government, forcing President Zine El-Abedine Ben Ali to flee the country after 23 years in power.Mr Ben Ali had declared the state of emergency and said protesters would be shot. He had also dismissed the government and called an early parliamentary election, pledging to step down in 2014.However, he was later forced to flee, with Paris reportedly his destination. Several of his relatives were arrested and Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi took charge.He said he would meet the representatives of political parties today in an atttempt to form a government.Four Thomas Cook flights filled with tourists flew into Manchester and two into Gatwick from Tunisia, which attracts 400,000 Britons a year. Many of them, including Scots, were left shocked.Cynthia Rigby, 55, from Liverpool, said: I was scared I was going to get hurt and I felt sorry for the people. It is horrible out there. Jim Thompson, 76, from East Kilbride, was 10 days into his break in Hammamet with his wife Eleanor, 71, when they were forced to abandon’their holiday.After landing at Gatwick, Mr Thompson, a retired technical author, said they had packed before Thomas Rosetta Stone V3 Cook told them to go home after being told their hotel manager had been gunned down.He added: He’d been to get prescriptions and was shot as he walked out of the door. He wasn’t even invovled in the protests, that’s how random it was. I said to my wife, that’s it, pack the bags, we’re leaving’. Hs wife Eleanor, 71, added: We are very relieved to be back. It was getting very frightening. Most people were too scared to leave the hotel. Others whose holiday was cut short included Dumfries man John Harper and his family, who flew into Manchester.The Association of British Travel Agents said around 5000 British tourists were in the country’s resorts, including Sousse, Portel Kantoui, Hammamet, Djerba, Skanes and Mahdia.Thomson and First Choice said they planned to bring all their customers back to the UK this weekend. Barrhead Travel owner Bill Munro said around 30 customers would fly back to Scotland tomorrow, and added ing that they were just playing it by ear .Thomas Cook cancelled tomorrow’s flights to Tunisia and was reviewing the situation for later in the week.First Choice and Thomson scrapped all excursions in the north African country and Thomson Airways’ flights tomorrow have been cancelled.A female lawyer who lives in Tunisia told The Herald she had shuttered in her home in Sousse. Everyone’s terrified, she said. We can hear gunshots in the distance. Now you’ve got the mob who just want to rob, and it’s chaos. The Foreign Office advised against all but essential travel to Tunisia.UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged a peaceful resolution to the violence. He said: Every effort must be made by all concerned parties to establish dialogue and resolve problems peacefully to prevent further loss, violence and escalations. US president Barack Obama said in a statement: I condemn and deplore the use of violence against citizens peacefully voicing their opinion in Tunisia, and I applaud the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people. Tweeting for changeA new generation of activists in Tunisia has been credited with driving the anti-government movement Rosetta Stone Arabic forward using the internet to spread their message.This is despite the state’s zealous online censorship and increasingly strict controls on internet content.Protest videos, tweets, and political manifestos have made their way onto the web in a variety of languages: Arabic, the Darija Tunisian dialect, French and English.Social media have been widely deployed to advertise protests and gatherings, with coverage logged instantaneously onto Twitter and Facebook.Twitter became the medium of the protest movement in Iran during last year’s protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.Tweets from supporters of candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi communicated their outrage at the re-election of Ahmadinejad and Iran’s brutal police tactics to the world.In Tunisia, the internet has played Rosetta Stone Languages a key role in the protest movement partly because the country leads North Africa and the Arab world in levels of internet access.It has been reported that more than 34% of the 10 million-strong population are online. Nearly two million people use Facebook.