Protesters assembled at a courthouse in central Tunis on the morning of May 28, waving placards as preliminary hearings got underway in a highly charged and unusual criminal case of blasphemy.
On May 6, the Tunis prosecutor for the Court of First Instance charged blogger and student Emna Chargui, 27, with “offending authorized religions” and “inciting hatred between religions” after a Ramadan Facebook post ignited furor across Tunisian social media. The case has roiled Tunisia’s largely conservative society, igniting impassioned protests among human rights activists and exposing deep cultural divides in a nation that has been widely regarded as a bastion of free speech in the Arab world.