The Tunisian footballer Nizar Issaoui died this Friday as a result of the Third degree burns suffered after immolating himself last Monday in protest against police abuse, after being accused of terrorism over a neighborhood dispute in the Kairouan region.

“Because of a fight with a person who sells bananas for 10 dinars, I go to the police station and they interrogate me for terrorism. Terrorism due to a complaint about bananas”, explained the young man in a live video published on social networks seconds before going to the act in front of the Police headquarters.

Issaoui, 35 years old and former player of the team Union Sportif de Monastir (first division), he was the father of four children and was transferred today from the Major Burns Unit in the capital to his hometown, Haffouz, where numerous neighbors received him to say goodbye. The security forces used tear gas to disperse dozens of inhabitants who demonstrated in front of the police station to denounce the death of Issaoui, forcing the businesses in the area to close.

In 2018 the death of another young man in the same circumstances raised a wave of protests in Kasserine (South) against the degradation of living conditions in one of the most impoverished regions of the country. Abderrazak Rezgui, a 32-year-old cameraman who worked for a private television channel, caught fire live on social networks to denounce the marginalization and abandonment of unemployed youth. Rezgui explained that with his action he intended to start a revolution like the one that broke out in 2011 after the immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, in the neighboring town of Sidi Bouzid, and that put an end to two decades of dictatorship of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.