Revolutionary social media heroes
One message that young activists from Tunisia and Egypt have in common, is that the ‘revolutions’ are far from over.
Lina Ben Mhenni, a Tunisian blogger and university assistant, was one of many young Tunisians that used social media to organise pro-democracy rallies and protests that eventually brought down the regime of president Ben Ali.
In December, while covering the Tunisian protests, I was able to make contact with her via Twitter, and then regularly called and emailed her for our continous coverage. She was in Doha, at the Al Jazeera Forum, where I caught up with her.
She spoke about the way forward for the country, and what challenges the youth and activists face as they try to understand political life in a country that was under one ruler for so many years.
Lina has since participated in a workshop on “Using social media in promoting Human Rights” at the UN’s Human Rights council in Geneva, sharing her experiences as an online activist with wide and growing network.
Also at the Forum, I spoke to Egyptian activist and youth leader Ahmed Maher. He is one of the co-founders of the April 6 Youth Movement, a Facebook group started in Spring 2008 to support Egyptian workers.
He was also very active during protests earlier this year that resulted in Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president stepping down. He told me that the Egyptian revolution was not finished – “it is still continuing”.