What does the name Mohamed Bouazizi mean to you? Haven’t heard of him? He’s the one who triggered all the turmoil that’s been toppling governments one after the other in North Africa and the Middle East. He himself doesn’t even know what he caused because he is dead. His suicide took place in Tunisia the day before the revolt broke out.
Mohamed was an unemployed student with a family to support and he tried to bring in some cash selling vegetables in the local marketplace. He was peddling without a license however and was caught by the authorities who confiscated his vegetable wagon. When he went to the police station to plead with them to return the wagon explaining that this was his sole source of livelihood a hard-hearted policewoman slapped him in the face and threw him out ignoring his pleas of desperation. Out of despair and humiliation he publicly set himself on fire and died of his burns.
That act was the match that ignited the entire region. The enraged populace took to the streets and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali the Tunisian strongman fled for his life. The rage quickly spread from Tunisia to Egypt. And now it includes Libya Yemen and Bahrain and we can only look on in fascination and fear not knowing where it is going to stop.
How is it that a petty incident over a vegetable stand should cause an international shakeup of such proportions when the participants in the drama never had an inkling that their isolated scene would play itself out on the world stage?
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