The Shams group, Tunisia’s first LGBT organization, planned to protest outside Tunisia’s parliament building in the Bardo neighborhood of Tunis, the nation’s capital. Members of the group and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) allies planned the demonstration for Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day. Dec. 10 was also the day that Marwen (pseudonym), a 22-year old gay Tunisian man from Sousse, imprisoned in September for committing homosexual acts in private, was up for appeal in his case against the justice system. His appeal was postponed until Dec. 17, as the judge announced he would decide the case by then.

Two days before the planned demonstration, Tunisia’s Bardo police precinct told the Shams group it would not be allowed to protest because "this perversion cannot be allowed" and indicated that Shams should "go to another country" to do it, Ahmed Ben Amor, a Shams vice president, told Al-Monitor. Then, in a fateful twist of events, with Shams’ protest request already denied by the police and Marwen’s appeal postponed, on Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day, six young men were arrested in their university dormitory in Kairouan and sentenced to three years each in prison on charges of sodomy. Shams called for protest against these new arrests, but with the state of emergency, the route forward remains unclear. Although the mere existence of an LGBT group in Tunisia and Marwen’s potential release are solid signs of progress, gay rights activists face a long, uphill battle in claiming equal rights in their country.

In September, police in Sousse used Article 230, the infamous Personal Status Code law banning sodomy, to imprison Marwen. Marwen’s case became a rallying cause for LGBT activists in Tunisia and abroad. The Shams organization launched a social media campaign with the hashtag #FreeMarwen to help work toward the abolition of Article 230 and to secure Marwen’s release from prison. For the campaign, Shams worked with other Tunisian human rights groups, such as Damj, another group focusing on LGBT issues. At the beginning of the campaign, which was launched in October, the two groups worked together productively.

All of that changed with the planned protest. Shams members felt the protest was a necessary response to comments made by Ennahda member of parliament Abdellatif Mekki on Nov. 29, when he said the group has no right to exist and runs counter to Tunisian values. His comments sparked widespread outrage in the Tunisian LGBT community, and Shams responded by planning the protest outside of parliament. It planned the protest even though the state of emergency caused by the Nov. 24 terrorist suicide attack, which targeted a presidential guard bus in downtown Tunis, killing 14 guards, required it to register with the local police bureau to get permission to protest.