Mounir Baatour—LGBT activist, lawyer, and first openly gay presidential candidate in the Arab world—was charged for sharing content on Facebook critical of Muhammad. Death threats from individuals and jihadists forced Baatour to flee to France.
being the first openly gay presidential candidate in the Arab world; leading the Tunisian Liberal Party; founding the Shams Association for LGBT rights
Mounir Baatour is a former Tunisian politician, the founder of the Tunisian Liberal Party, and the leader of the Tunisian LGBT advocacy organization, the Shams Association.
In 2019, he became Tunisia’s first openly gay presidential candidate. This in itself led to a slew of death threats from anonymous individuals on social media, exacerbated by the fact of homosexuality's criminalization in Tunisia. However, he went on campaigning and saw it through to the end.
“The police contacted me and said they considered the threat as very serious … The Islamists want to kill me.” - Mounir Baatour
Only after the election did he see threats serious enough to merit leaving the country. He received more social media death threats accusing him of apostasy, and police contacted him to notify him of “serious” threats to his life. This came after an investigation was opened against him by Tunisian authorities over a social media post; Mounir had shared content from a page that disparaged the Prophet Muhammad. Accused of “inciting religious hatred,” living in Tunisia became more dangerous for him than it already had been.
In January 2020, Mounir fled to Paris, where he continued to head the Shams Association. He has stated he has no regrets about his advocacy or anything he said.
“It's my personality, my identity … I will continue to fight for the rights [of LGBT Tunisians].” - Mounir Baatour
Tunisia: Halt Prosecution of Prominent Activist - Human Rights Watch
Tunisia's First Gay Presidential Candidate Faces Threats From Extremists - Voice of America
Prominent Tunisian LGBT+ activist flees death threats - Thomson Reuters Foundation News
Mounir Baatour Wants to Tear Down the Biggest Taboo in the Muslim World - International Policy Digest
Gay-rights activists take to the air in Tunisia - The Economist
Tunisia invokes sharia law in bid to shut down LGBT rights group - The Guardian
Tunisia is among the most open and democratic countries in the Middle East/North Africa region. Nevertheless, troubling patterns with regard to free expression in the realm of religion persist. Islam is still the country's official religion, and the country still maintains and enforces various laws against "inciting religious hatred" and against speech that transgresses against public morals and decency, vaguely defined. These assure that the country has a de facto blasphemy prohibition. Enforcement of the laws in response to religiously "offensive" expression is perhaps less common than blasphemy prosecutions in some neighboring countries, but it can and does occur.