Early in 2010 the world witnesses some quite astonishing events in North Africa and the
Mohamed Bouazizi commemorative stamp
Middle East. What has come to be known as the Arab Spring has already forced two leaders from their posts, Tunisian president Ben Ali and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, following mass protests calling for political change. Colonel Gadaffi of Libya is dead and low level conflicts continue in Syria and Algeria.
The spark that ignited the Arab Spring is the death of one man – Mohamed Bouazizi – the Tunisian flower seller who set fire to himself (self-immolation) and died 18 days later. The question or course is what drove a flower seller in the town of Sidi Bouzid to take his own life as a form of protest?
Locally known as Basboosa, Bouazizi was born in 1984 in Sidi Bouzid, was educated until his late teens and then began to work full time to help support his six brothers and sisters and his mother. Sidi Bouzid seems to have been a town riven by corruption and unemployment and Bouazizi had suffered from mistreatment by the local authorities for years. Harassed by police because he didn’t have a permit to sell flowers (even though it seems one was not necessary), he would join in the usual bribing of officers to ensure he continued to sell and make a living.
On the 16th December, indebted from the purchase of stock, Bouazizi was unable to pay the police and an altercation started involving a local government official, Faida Hamdi. Hamdi is alleged to have humiliated Bouazizi, slapping him, spitting in his face and confiscating his scales. Appalled by this insult from a female official, Bouazizi made his way to the governor’s office to complain and get his scales back; when the governor refused to acknowledge him, Bouazizi threatened to set himself on fire. Obtaining a can of petrol from a nearby petrol station, he stood in the road outside the office, shouted “how do you expect me to make a living?” then set fire to himself.
Following Bouazizi’s death at the end of January, protests began locally that spread nationally and then internationally, resulting in the political changes that have engulfed several countries in the region. The flower seller is now a hero, squares in Tunis and Paris and have been named after him and he was posthumously awarded the Sakharov Prize (for freedom of though) in 2011.
Protests in Sidi Bouzid