Press banned from opening session of new Tunisian parliament

President Kais Saied redrew the constitution to radically reduce the parliament’s power in 2021. Photograph: Yassine Mahjoub/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock

Independent and foreign journalists have been barred from attending the first session of Tunisia’s new parliament, which has been largely stripped of its powers by the increasingly autocratic president.

The ban on journalists entering the parliament building is the first since the revolution that ousted the late dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.