Mohamed Bouazizi - The martyr of revolution

Mohamed Bouazizi

On 17 Dec, 2010, exactly a year ago, a 26-year-old street vendor. On a Friday morning he set out for work, selling produce from a cart. Police had hassled him routinely for years, his family says, fining him, making him jump through bureaucratic hoops. On Dec. 17, 2010, a cop started giving him grief yet again. She confiscated his scale and allegedly slapped him. He walked straight to the provincial-capital building to complain and got no response. At the gate, he drenched himself in paint thinner and lit a match. Of course he was Mohamed Bouazizi - The martyr of Revolution.

A day after his self-immolation, hundreds of youths smashed shop windows and damaged cars in Sidi Bouzid. Film footage of the rampage was posted on Facebook and went viral as millions of Tunisians and other Arabs witnessed the rare rebellion.

President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, 2nd left, as he visits Mohamed Bouazizi, the young man from Sidi Bouzid who set fire to himself before being rescued and taken to intensive care at the Ben Arous Burn and Trauma Centre, in Tunis, Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2010. (AP Photo/Tunisian Presidency)

Within three days of Mr. Bouazizi’s attempted suicide, as he lay dying in a Tunis hospital, the street protests had reached the capital and 1,000 workers clashed with police outside the offices of the General Union of Tunisian Workers.

M. Bouazizi - Set fire to himself

With each passing day, the demonstrations grew larger and more intense. Police cars and government buildings were set ablaze. Students, teachers, lawyers, journalists, trade unionists, human rights activists, opposition politicians and ordinary people poured into the streets to condemn their government’s economic policies, corruption and repression.

After 10 days of protests, Tunisia’s president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, reshuffled his cabinet, fired the communications minister and claimed foreign journalists were manipulating the unrest to hurt Tunisia’s image.

Four weeks into the unrest, 11 people were killed as mobs attacked public buildings, including the headquarters of Mr. Ben Ali’s party.

In an attempt to defuse the protests, the president made a televised visit to Mr. Bouazizi’s hospital bedside. But a week later the vegetable seller died and Tunisia experienced a renewed spasm of outrage. During Mr. Bouazizi’s funeral several hundred people chanted...

“Farewell Mohamed, we will avenge you. We weep for you today, others will weep tomorrow for what they did to you.”

On Jan. 13, Mr. Ben Ali gave a televised national address, pledging not to run for re-election when his term ended in 2014 and promising to create 300,000 jobs. But it wasn’t enough to save his 23-year-old regime.

The daily street demonstrations simply grew larger. Soldiers, called out to disperse the crowds, began to fraternize with them as thousands of Tunisians took up the chant, “The people demand the removal of the regime.”

By Jan. 15 Mr. Ben Ali had fled to Saudi Arabia and prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi announced he was taking over as interim president. But within a month, Mr. Ghannouchi was also forced to resign, after protesters, frustrated by the slow pace of change, clashed with police.

Manoubia Bouazizi, the mother of Mohamed Bouazizi: “My son died defending dignity and liberty." "We are poor and they thought we had no power.” “My son is lost, but look what is happening, how many people are getting involved. Nothing would have happened if he had not reacted against voicelessness and a lack of respect. “He is no longer the son of Tunisia.” “He is the son of the whole world.” 

Manoubia and Basma, Mother & sister of M. Bouazizi

Her teenage daughter Basma, 16, rushes to comfort her. A few moments later, Mannoubia stops crying, dabbing her blue eyes with the edge of her multicolored hijab, a rare sight in secular Tunis but common in conservative, rural parts of the country. "I am proud of my son, although I am in mourning, and I am sad, but thanks to God, Mohammed lives, he didn't die," she says resolutely. "He lives on, his name lives on. I am proud of what happened in Tunis, I am proud that he is known throughout the Arab world."

Mohamed Bouazizi  is now famous throughout Tunisia and the Arab world — a legend, in fact. But Mohammed Bouazizi never set out to be a byword. His aunt Radia Bouazizi says his dream was to save enough money to be able to rent or buy a pickup truck. "Not to cruise around in," she says, "but for his work." Her nephew was a vegetable seller. "He would come home tired after pushing the cart around all day. All he wanted was a pickup." Instead, he started a revolution. 

Bouazizi was like the hundreds of desperate, downtrodden young men in hardscrabble Sidi Bouzid. Many of them have university degrees but spend their days loitering in the cafés lining the dusty streets of this impoverished town, 190 miles (300 km) south of the capital Tunis. Bouazizi, 26, didn't have a college degree, having only reached what his mother says was the baccalaureate level, which is roughly equivalent to high school. He was, however, luckier than most in that he at least earned an income from selling vegetables, work that he'd had for seven years.

Bouazizi has become a popular symbol among Arabs. He is being emulated as well. There have been almost a dozen copycat self-immolations in several Arab capitals including Cairo and Algiers. However, they have not provoked the same popular reaction as Bouazizi's martyrdom did in Tunisia, despite the seething frustrations of Egyptians and Algerians over high unemployment, corruption and autocratic rule.

Sources: TIME, National Post, Associated Press (Photo/Video)

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