General Tunisian Union of Students (UGTE)

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GENERAL TUNISIAN UNION OF STUDENTS (UGTE)

Tunisian student union.

The Union Générale Tunisienne des Etudiants (UGTE) was Tunisia's major student group until the government banned it in early 1991 because of its association with the Islamist movement. Beginning in the 1980s, the Islamic Tendency Movement (Mouvement de Tendance Islamique; MTI) actively sought to take over the UGTE. It charged its University Bureau's Mokhtar Bedri with securing Islamist domination at the University of Tunis and provincial colleges through control of the UGTE.

The UGTE Islamist leadership was decimated by numerous arrests, trials, and imprisonments from 1991 to 1992. The government then infiltrated cadres of RCD (government party) candidates into leadership positions in the UGTE. As a result, the UGTE is more nonactivist and pro-government.


Bibliography

Dunn, Michael Collins. Renaissance or Radicalism? Political Islam: The Case of Tunisia's al-Nahda. Washington, DC, 1992.

Larry A. Barrie

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