Tunis (AFP)
Famous Tunisian blogger Lina Ben Mhenni, at the forefront of the uprising that led to the fall of the Ben Ali regime in 2011, died Monday at the age of 36 of a long illness, we learned from her entourage.
A human rights activist, the young woman had suffered from a chronic illness for many years. After the revolution that ousted Zine el Abidine Ben Ali from power, his name had circulated for the Nobel Peace Prize in late 2011.
Before the fall of the dictatorship, and despite the risks, Lina Ben Mhenni had for years witnessed on the internet the excesses of the Ben Ali regime. To feed her blog "atunisiangirl", she had moved to many disadvantaged cities in the interior of the country.
Equipped with her small camera, she had broadcast, via social networks, the first expressions of anger from residents against the government.
After the immolation by fire of the itinerant salesman Mohamed Bouazizi on December 17, 2010, Lina Ben Mhenni had been the first blogger to go to Sidi Bouzid, cradle of the revolution.
His chronicle of the revolution in French, English and Arabic was the high point of this commitment against the dictatorship.
In 2011, Lina Ben Mhenni had drawn a book, "Tunisian Girl, blogger for an Arab Spring".
She then continued her activism to defend fundamental rights in Tunisia, despite her fragile health participating in numerous demonstrations and trials concerning freedom of expression.
This "voice of the Tunisian revolt", assistant in English language in a faculty of Tunis, had recognized these last months living a calvary, denouncing in the passage the state of the hospitals of the capital.
© 2020 AFP