Radhia Nasraoui

Radhia Nasraoui
راضية النصراوي
Personal details
Born	1953 (age 72–73) Tunis, Tunisia
Spouse	Hamma Hammami
Children	Nadia Oussaïma Sarah
Nickname	Radhiatelli

Radhia Nasraoui (Tunisian Arabic: راضية النصراوي; born 1953) is a Tunisian human rights lawyer known for her work against torture. She is a founding member and the president of the Association de lutte contre la torture en Tunisie (ALTT).

Struggle for human rights

In the 1970s, Radhia Nasraoui started campaigning for human rights, when the regime of President Bourguiba banned demonstrations by students and workers. In 1976, she managed to convince her employing firm to defend students who are accused. Two years later, in the aftermath of the Black Thursday, a general strike accompanied by bloody riots and resulting in many deaths, Nasraoui opened her own firm.

Nasraoui was one of the founding members of the Association de lutte contre la torture en Tunisie (ALTT). On 26 June 2003 she and three fellow founders, Chokri Latif, Ali Ben Salem and Ridha Barakati, went to the Tunis governorate offices to lodge the association's registration papers, and the Tunisian authorities refused to register it. As the association's president, she has denounced what she describes as the systematic practice of torture in Tunisia under President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who took power on 7 November 1987.

Due to her professional activities in favor of human rights in Tunisia, Radhia Nasraoui continued to be exposed to repression and police brutality. The U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women reported:

On 12 February 1998, the Office of Radhia Nasraoui was ransacked and most of her records stolen [...] Her house is under constant surveillance, her phone line is cut or regularly tapped. In addition, her daughters endure constant bullying. 8 May 2001, while returning from Paris, she was intercepted at the airport of Tunis and all documents (including articles on the repression in Tunisia) were confiscated. In August, her car was vandalized. Harassment of her and her daughters has increased since the beginning of January 2002.

From 15 October to 10 December 2003, she went on hunger strike "to protest against government agents' burglarizing of her office and terrorizing her family and to demand that justice should be done after a physical assault suffered in July" she put an end to the strike on the day of the commemoration of the 55th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Radhia Nasraoui continued to be exposed to state repression until the revolution of 2011 marked the fall of President Ben Ali. During this period, she was considered as a lawyer and activist against Torture and one of Tunisia's most renowned opinion leaders of the Arab Spring. Even after the revolution, she continued to denounce cases of torture and mistreatment of prisoners. She is also a member of the sponsorship committee of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine which work began 4 March 2009.

Personal life

Radhia Nasraoui is married to Hamma Hammami, the secretary general of the Workers' Party since 1981, and they have three daughters, Nadia, Sarah and Oussaïma.

Awards and honours

• 2005: honorary doctorate from the Université libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, for her defence of human rights and her work for the emancipation of Tunisian women.
• 2011: Roland Berger Human Dignity Award, presented on 22 November 2011 for her years of work against torture and for an independent judiciary in Tunisia.
• 2012: Olof Palme Prize, shared with the Saudi human rights lawyer Waleed Abu al-Khair, for "untiring work against torture and impunity for more than three decades". The prize was announced on 21 January 2013 and presented on 25 January 2013.

External links

• Katalin Wrede (18 November 2011). "Radhia Nasraoui – Leading the fight against torture in Tunisia". Human Dignity Forum. Archived from the original on 16 August 2013. Retrieved 21 June 2013.