Lotfi Bouchnak has initiated legal proceedings following a defamation campaign carried out on social networks, his lawyer Ahmed Ben Hassana announced on Tuesday. A complaint has been filed against any person that the investigation will identify, in a case linked to the alleged dissemination of manipulated content damaging the image of the artist.
Speaking on Jawhara FM, the lawyer indicated that this approach was taken in coordination with the music and associated professions union, in order to respond to what he considers to be an attempt at disinformation.
According to the defense, the controversy is based on the broadcast of an old video extracted from its context and then modified by editing. The content in question presents a song as a recent work supporting certain theses linked to migration, whereas it is, according to the lawyer, an artistic work dating from 2021.
This song was produced on the occasion of World Refugee Day, at the request of the Arab Institute for Human Rights, and performed voluntarily by Lotfi Bouchnak in a humanitarian context.
Ahmed Ben Hassana claimed that new images would have been added to the original video in order to suggest that the artist supported positions unrelated to the initial context of the work.
He recalled that the song aimed to salute the values of solidarity shown by Tunisians towards several refugee populations in recent years, notably Syrian, Libyan and Palestinian.
The defense believes that this case aims to damage the reputation of Lotfi Bouchnak, a major figure on the Tunisian cultural scene. The lawyer indicated that justice will determine responsibilities and identify the authors of the dissemination of the contested content.
