{A Tunisian court Monday sentenced to one month in prison a man who smoked a cigarette in public during the Muslim dawn-to-dusk holy fasting month of Ramadan, a spokesman said.}<\/p>\n
The man was seen smoking outside the Bizerte courthouse by a judiciary official who informed the police before they arrested him and referred him to the prosecution, the spokesman Chokri Lahmar said.<\/p>\n
He said the man had 10 days to appeal before the sentence takes effect.<\/p>\n
On June 1 four men were sentenced to one-month jail terms for eating in public during Ramadan.<\/p>\n
There is no law against eating or drinking in public during Ramadan, but every year the issue comes to the fore in the North African country.<\/p>\n
Tunisia’s constitution guarantees “freedom of belief and conscience”, but the state is also the “guardian of religion”.<\/p>\n
Monday’s ruling came a day after dozens of Tunisians demonstrated in the capital Tunis to demand the right to eat and drink in public during the Muslim fasting month.<\/p>\n
During Ramadan, Muslims around the world abstain from eating, drinking, smoking and having sex from dawn to dusk.<\/p>\n
They break the fast with a meal known as iftar and before dawn they have a second opportunity to eat and drink during suhur.<\/p>\n
Source:AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{A Tunisian court Monday sentenced to one month in prison a man who smoked a cigarette in public during the Muslim dawn-to-dusk holy fasting month of Ramadan, a spokesman said.} The man was seen smoking outside the Bizerte courthouse by a judiciary official who informed the police before they arrested him and referred him to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[228],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-35115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-afp"],"bylines":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"contributors":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35115"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=35115"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=35115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}