Lucas Dolega, whose birth name was Loucas von Zabiensky-Mebrouk and who was also called Lucas Mebrouk Dolega, (1978–2011) was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

/German

Germans

The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 photojournalist who was reportedly killed by Tunisian police while he was photographing a protest in Tunis

Tunis

Tunis is the capital of both the Tunisian Republic and the Tunis Governorate. It is Tunisia's largest city, with a population of 728,453 as of 2004; the greater metropolitan area holds some 2,412,500 inhabitants....

. Dolega was the first journalist killed during the 2010-2011 Tunisian protests, according to Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...

, and the first journalist to die while on assignment in the Arab Spring

Arab Spring

The Arab Spring , otherwise known as the Arab Awakening, is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests occurring in the Arab world that began on Saturday, 18 December 2010...

 uprisings.

He was fatally injured on the same day that Zine El Abidine Ben Ali

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali is a Tunisian political figure who was the second President of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. Ben Ali was appointed Prime Minister in October 1987, and he assumed the Presidency on 7 November 1987 in a bloodless coup d'état that ousted President Habib Bourguiba, who was...

 fled Tunisia for exile.

Personal information

Dolega was born in Paris on 19 August 1978 to a German mother and a French father, a journalist and a doctor respectively. He grew up in Paris, before moving to Tangier in Morocco. He had French and German citizenship, and started work as a photographer for European Pressphoto Agency

European Pressphoto Agency

European Pressphoto Agency B.V. is an international news photo agency.Images from all parts of the world covering news, politics, sports, business, finance as well as arts, culture and entertainment are provided by a global network of over 400 professional photographers and included in the epa news...

 in April 2006. He was based in Paris, covered a variety of stories in Europe, and in 2008 photographed the Congo.

Dolega was 32 years old when he died.

Death

On 14 January, the day after Dolega arrived in Tunis, and at the end of a demonstration on Avenue Bourguiba, he was within a group of journalists at the corner of rue Gandhi and rue de Marseille. He was hit in the head by a tear gas canister, about 20cm long and 5cm diameter, reportedly fired by police at short range and horizontally toward a group of photographers. He was taken first to a clinic and then to Tunis Rabta Neurologic Hospital where he was operated on but died on 17 January.

Impact

Dolega was the first of a number of journalists who were killed over the course of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011. He was killed while on assignment. He is among a group of photojournalists who were killed while covering protests, such as Hiro Muramoto

Hiro Muramoto

was a Japanese cameraman and journalist, who worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Tokyo in the 1990s, and who reported for Reuters television for more than 15 years. Muramoto was based in Reuters' Tokyo bureau.-Career:...

, cameraman and journalist shot by a soldier in Bangkok, 2010; or Kenji Nagai

Kenji Nagai

was a Japanese photojournalist who took many assignments to conflict zones and dangerous areas around the world. He was shot dead in Burma during the 2007 Burmese anti-government protests....

, who was photojournalist shot by a soldier in Rangoon, 2007.

Legacy

The Lucas Dolega Award (Prix Lucas Dolega) was established in 2011 to honor photojournalists who have reported under difficult cirmstanstances.

External links

• Lucas Dolega: Photoreporter website
• Photographs by Lucas Dolega, European Pressphoto Agency
• Michel Puech, "Tunis: le photographe Lucas Dolega de l'agence EPA est décédé". Mediapart, January 2011.