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Tunisia: demonstration for the return of waste to Italy
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A few dozen Tunisians demonstrated outside the Italian embassy in Tunis on Thursday to demand the return to that country of 282 containers of household waste illegally imported from Italy last summer.

"Get your shit", was it written on banners in Italian, while the demonstrators had deposited trash bags symbolically decorated with flowers.

"We welcome you with flowers and you with waste," Hamdi Chebâane, waste recovery expert, and member of a coalition of environmental defense associations, who had already demonstrated on Sunday told AFP.
at the port of Sousse (center).

"We want you to take back your waste," he added, also calling on the Tunisian state to take "the right decisions for the return of this waste".

The containers from Campania, a region in southern Italy, are still at the port and in a warehouse near Sousse.
They had been imported by a Tunisian company which had wrongly presented them as plastic waste that it was supposed to recycle.

Minister of the Environment arrested
Twenty-six people are being prosecuted in Tunisia in this case, including customs officials and the former environment minister, Mustapha Aroui, who was arrested.

Eight are in prison and one on the run: the manager of the importing company, who had signed a contract with an Italian company for the disposal of up to 120,000 tonnes, at a price of 48 euros per tonne, i.e. a total exceeding 5 million
euros.

This case caused a scandal in Tunisia, especially as Tunisian infrastructure does not allow the country to treat its own waste.

According to Tunisian media, authorities in Campania recently blocked the export to Tunisia of another 600 waste containers intended for incineration in a cement factory, over suspicion of their compliance.

On Sunday, dozens of activists demonstrated in Sousse to demand the return to Italy of these 282 containers of waste.

With AFP

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