A Tunisian rights group said on Wednesday that authorities had launched a wave of arrests targeting LGBTQ people, accusing authorities of “mistreatment” of detainees.

Article 230 of the North African country’s penal code criminalises homosexuality with punishment of up to three years in prison.
Saif Ayadi, programme officer at Tunisian rights group Damj, told AFP that at least 14 people had been arrested over the past week, nine in the capital Tunis and five on the southern island of Djerba.
Ayadi condemned the state’s “practices… against gender identities and sexual orientations”.
“We are forced to stay at home, in our private spaces, without displaying our identities.”
Damj recorded 84 arrests between September last year and January.
The arrests this week, according to Ayadi, involved body and phone searches and other “acts of mistreatment” by police.
Contacted by AFP, the interior ministry did not immediately comment.
According to Damj, at least six of those arrested this week have already been sentenced to prison terms of up to two years for violations of Article 230.
Rights group Amnesty International called on Tunisian authorities to “promptly and unconditionally free everyone detained for their apparent or real sexual orientation and gender identity”.
Hussein Baoumi, Amnesty’s deputy regional director, told AFP that “it is time to end this weaponisation of morality” against LGBTQ people.
Amnesty in February said Tunisian authorities had “stepped up their crackdown” on LGBTQ people, calling for an end to anal tests which the group argued were “a form of torture”.