Tarek al-Tayyib Muhammad Bouazizi , more commonly known as
Mohamed Bouazizi, was a
Tunisian street vendor who
set himself on fire on December 17, 2010, in protest of the confiscation of his wares and the harassment and humiliation that was allegedly inflicted on him by a
municipal official and her aides. This act became the catalyst for the
Tunisian Revolution, sparking deadly demonstrations and riots throughout Tunisia in protest of social and political issues in the country. Anger and violence intensified following Bouazizi's death, leading then-President
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to step down on January 14, 2011, after 23 years in power.
The success of the Tunisian protests sparked
protests in several other Arab countries, including several men who
emulated Bouazizi's act, in an attempt to bring an end to
autocratic governments. Those men and Bouazizi are hailed by some Arab commentators as "heroic martyrs of a new Middle Eastern revolution."
[1]
| (March 29, 1984 – January 4, 2011) |
Early life and employment struggles
Mohamed Bouazizi, who was known locally as
Basboosa,
[2] was born in
Sidi Bouzid,
Tunisia, on March 29, 1984. His father, a construction worker in
Libya, died of a heart attack when Bouazizi was three, and his mother married Bouazizi's uncle some time later.
[3] Along with his six siblings,
[4] Bouazizi was educated in a one-room country school in Sidi Salah, a village 12 miles from Sidi Bouzid.
[5] Although multiple media outlets reported that Bouazizi had a university degree,
[4][6][7] his sister, Samia Bouazizi, stated that he had never graduated from high school,
[8] but that it was something he had wanted for both himself and his sisters.
[5] With his uncle in poor health and unable to work regularly,
[9] Bouazizi had worked various jobs since he was ten,
[3] and in his late teens he quit school in order to work full-time.
[9]
Bouazizi lived in a modest stucco home, a 20-minute walk from the center of Sidi Bouzid,
[10][11] a rural town in Tunisia burdened by corruption
[12] and suffering an unemployment rate estimated at 30%.
[3] According to his mother, he applied to join the army, but was refused, and several subsequent job applications also resulted in rejection.
[9] He supported his mother, uncle, and younger siblings, including paying for one of his sisters to attend university, by earning approximately
US$140 per month selling
produce on the street in Sidi Bouzid.
[5][9] He was also working toward the goal of buying or renting a pickup truck for his work.
[13] A close friend of Bouazizi said he "was a very well-known and popular man [who] would give free fruit and vegetables to very poor families".
[9]
Confiscation of wares and self-immolation
Local police officers had targeted Bouazizi for years, even during his childhood, regularly confiscating his small wheelbarrow of produce;
[9] but Bouazizi had few options to try to make a living, so he continued to work as a street vendor. Around
10 p.m. on December 16, 2010, he had contracted approximately
US$200 in debt to buy the produce he was to sell the following day. On the morning of December 17, he started his workday at 8 a.m.
[5] Just after
10:30 a.m., the police began harassing him again, ostensibly because he did not have a vendor's permit.
[13] However, while some sources state that
street vending is illegal in Tunisia,
[14] and others that Bouazizi lacked a required permit to sell his wares,
[5][13] according to the head of Sidi Bouzid's state office for employment and independent work, no permit is needed to sell from a cart.
[12]
It has also been claimed that Bouazizi did not have the funds to
bribe police officials to allow his street vending to continue.
[5][15] Similarly, two of Bouazizi's siblings accused authorities of attempting to
extort money from their brother,
[12] and during an interview with
Reuters, one of his sisters stated, "What kind of repression do you imagine it takes for a young man to do this? A man who has to feed his family by buying goods on credit when they fine him ... and take his goods. In Sidi Bouzid, those with no connections and no money for bribes are humiliated and insulted and not allowed to live."
[11]
Regardless, Bouazizi's family claims he was publicly humiliated when a 45-year-old female
municipal official, Faida Hamdi,
[3][4][9] slapped him in the face, spat at him, confiscated his electronic weighing
scales, and tossed aside his produce cart.
[13] It was also stated that she made a slur against his deceased father.
[11][13] Bouazizi's family says her gender made his humiliation worse.
[4][16] His mother also claimed Hamdi's aides beat and swore at her son. Countering these claims, in an interview with
Asharq Al-Awsat, a brother of Hamdi claimed neither his sister nor her aides slapped or otherwise mistreated Bouazizi. He said they only confiscated Bouazizi's wares. However, an eye witness told
Asharq Al-Awsat that he did not see Hamdi slap Bouazizi, but that her aides did beat him.
[17]
Bouazizi, angered by the confrontation,
[18] went to the governor's office to complain.
[13] Following the governor's refusal to see or listen to him,
[13] even after Bouazizi was quoted as saying "'If you don't see me, I'll burn myself'", he acquired a can of
gasoline (or two bottles of
paint thinner) and, at
11:30 a.m. local time (less than an hour after the altercation),
[13][19] he doused himself in front of a local government building and set himself alight.
[19]
Death and funeral
According to the Bouazizi family lawyer, Bouazizi was taken by ambulance to a medical facility in Sidi Bouzid. When they were not able to treat Bouazizi's severe burns, he was taken to the city of
Sfax, more than 70 miles away.
[5] Later, as the government's interest in his case grew, he was transferred to a hospital in the town of
Ben Arous at the Burn and Trauma Centre, where he was visited by then-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
[20] According to Bouazizi's mother, Ben Ali promised to send him to a treatment facility in France,
[9] but no such transfer was ever arranged and Bouazizi died in Ben Arous, 18 days after the immolation, on January 4, 2011, at
5:30 p.m. local time.
[21][22]
It is estimated that more than 5,000 people participated in the funeral procession that began in Sidi Bouzid and continued through to Bouazizi's native village, though police did not allow the procession to pass near the spot at which Bouazizi had burned himself.
[23] From the crowd, many were heard chanting "Farewell, Mohammed, we will avenge you. We weep for you today. We will make those who caused your death weep."
[24] He was buried at Garaat Bennour cemetery, 10 miles from Sidi Bouzid.
[25]
Bouazizi is considered a martyr by the
Progressive Democratic Party (PDP).
[9] On February 4, 2011,
Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of
Paris, announced that, as a tribute to honour Bouazizi, a place in Paris will be named after him.
[26]
Aftermath
Investigation
An investigation was launched following Bouazizi's self-immolation to determine what took place during the incident that led to his action. On December 20, 2010, it was reported that Faida Hamdi, the female officer who allegedly accosted Bouazizi the day of his immolation, was suspended along with the secretary-general (governor) of Sidi Bouzid,
[27] but this was subsequently denied by the secretary-general of the Sidi Bouzid municipality.
[28] Some time later, Hamdi was arrested on orders from then-President Ben Ali and held in an unspecified town.
[3][17] A brother of Hamdi later stated that she had been arrested and detained on two separate occasions, the first time following Ben Ali's visit to Bouazizi in the hospital and subsequent meeting with his mother and sister at his presidential palace. He says his sister and her aides were released following a short detention and the closing of the investigation which "confirmed her innocence".
[17] He said her second arrest was "in response to the demands of the Tunisian protestors", and that the Tunisian security authorities informed him that she was being held only for her own protection and would be released once the protesting ended.
[17]
According to Bouazizi's mother, who was not aware of her son's intentions before he carried out his act of self-immolation,
[19] he did what he did because he had been humiliated, not because of the family's poverty.
[13] "It got to him deep inside, it hurt his pride", she said, referring to the police harassment.
[9] One of Bouazizi's sisters stated during an interview with
Asharq Al-Awsat that their family intends to take legal action against all involved, "whether this is the municipal officers that slapped and insulted him, or the mayor [who] refused to meet him."
[17]
Protests
Outraged by the events that led to Bouazizi's self-immolation,
protests began in Sidi Bouzid within hours,
[12] building for more than two weeks, with attempts by police to quiet the unrest serving only to fuel what had become a violent and deadly movement.
[29] After Bouazizi's death, the protests became widespread, moving into the more affluent areas and eventually into the capital.
[13] The anger and violence became so intense that President Ben Ali fled Tunisia with his family on January 14, 2011,
[13] trying first to go to
Paris, but was refused refuge by the
French government. They were eventually welcomed into
Saudi Arabia under many conditions, ending his 23-year dictatorship and sparking "angry condemnation" among Saudis.
[29] In Tunisia, unrest persisted as a new regime took over, leaving many citizens of Tunisia feeling as though their needs were still being ignored.
[30]
Copycat incidents
Since Bouazizi's self-immolation led to the successful overthrow of the Ben Ali regime, a number of self-immolation protests
emulating Bouazizi's have taken place in several other countries in the
Middle East and
Europe. In
Algeria, during protests against rising food prices and spreading unemployment,
[31] there have been
many cases. The first reported case following Bouazizi's death is among those whose attempted suicide was successful. Mohsen Bouterfif, a 37-year-old father of two, set himself on fire when the mayor of
Boukhadra refused to meet with him and others regarding employment and housing requests on January 13, 2011. According to a report in
El-Watan, the mayor challenged him, saying if he had courage he would immolate himself by fire as Bouazizi had done.
[32] He died on January 24. Maamir Lotfi, a 36-year-old unemployed father of six who was denied a meeting with the governor, burned himself in front of the
El Oued town hall on January 17. He died on February 12.
[33] Abdelhafid Boudechicha, a 29-year-old day laborer who lived with his parents and five siblings, burned himself in
Medjana on January 28 over employment and housing issues. He died the following day.
[34]
In
Egypt, Abdou Abdel-Moneim Jaafar, a 49-year-old restaurant owner, set himself alight in front of the
Egyptian Parliament.
[35] His act of protest contributed to the instigation of weeks of protest and, later, the resignation of Egyptian then-President
Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011. In
Saudi Arabia, an unidentified 65-year-old man died on January 21, 2011, after setting himself on fire in the town of
Samtah,
Jizan. This was apparently the kingdom's first known case of self-immolation.
[36][37]
Although these cases, with the
exception of Egypt, did not provoke the same kind of popular reaction that Bouazizi's case did in Tunisia, the Algerian,
Yemeni, and
Jordanian governments have experienced significant protests and made major concessions in response to them.
[13] As such, these men and Bouazizi are being hailed by some as "heroic martyrs of a new Arab revolution."
[1]
The wave of copycat incidents reached Europe on February 11, 2011, in a case very similar to Bouazizi's. Noureddine Adnane, a 27-year-old
Moroccan street vendor, set himself on fire in
Palermo,
Sicily, in protest of the confiscation of his wares and the harassment that was allegedly inflicted on him by municipal officials.
[38] He died five days later.
[39]
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