How a slap sparked Tunisia's revolution

How a slap sparked Tunisia's revolution
Bob Simon reports on the protests that ousted a repressive government
and spread to other nations

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/02/20/60minutes/main20033404.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody

(CBSNews)

The wave of revolutions sweeping the Arab world started in a forgotten
town in the flatlands of Tunisia. It was an unlikely place for history
to be made. But so was Tunisia itself, the smallest country in North
Africa, strategically irrelevant, with no oil and not much of an army.

It has been an oasis of tranquility in this tumultuous part of the
world, famous for its beaches, its couscous and its wonderful weather.
But there was a dark side to paradise: for 23 years, Tunisia was ruled
by a corrupt and ruthless dictator named Zine Ben Ali, who filled his
prisons with anyone who spoke out against him.

He's gone now. A month ago, he left the country, quickly. In one of
the most astonishing episodes of our time, he was overthrown by a
popular uprising sparked by the desperate act of one simple man. If
the Middle East is being transformed before our eyes today, it all
began when a poor fruit vendor decided he just wasn't going to take it
anymore.

Sidi Bouzid, a town of 40,000, doesn't get so much as a mention in the
Tunisian guidebooks. Tourists don't come to the town. On the morning
of Dec. 17, 26-yr.-old Mohammed Bouazizi was selling fruit from a cart
as he did every day to support his family. He didn't have a license.
But very few of the vendors did.

A municipal official, a woman, came by and confiscated his scale. It
was worth $100 and Bouazizi knew he'd have to pay a bribe to get it
back. This had happened to him before. But this time, he got mad. He
complained and the woman slapped him. One slap in the face, and that's
how the revolution began.

He ran, screaming, to the government office in the center of town. He
wanted his scale back. That's all. But they wouldn't let him in. He
went to a gas station, filled up a canister and went back to the
government building. His friend Jamil, another fruit vendor, went with
him. Jamil says Bouazizi stood in the middle of traffic, poured gas
over himself and cried out, "How do you expect me to make a living?"

Then he lit a match. He barely survived.

Bouazizi's mother says her son wasn't political in any way. He just
wanted to continue making his $10 a day and send his sisters away to
college. But that slap was one indignity too many. It was illegal to
demonstrate in Tunisia, but hundreds came from all over town to
protest. Nothing like that had ever happened before in Sidi Bouzid.

"The symbol by just burning himself, using his body as a way to
express that anger and need for dignity touched a lot of Tunisians,"
Zied Mhirsi told "60 Minutes" correspondent Bob Simon.

Mhirsi is a doctor and radio show host who was active in the uprising.
He worked with us on our story.

"Do you think this revolution would have happened now if it hadn't
been for Bouazizi?" Simon asked.

"I don't think so," Mhirsi replied, shaking his head.

The anger spread to other towns in the interior of the country, where
unemployment among university graduates was approaching 50 percent.
The dictator Ben Ali did the only thing he knew how to do: he turned
to his police.

"The turning point, the real one here was the real bullets. Tunisia is
one of the most peaceful countries you can ever think of. Tunisia,
people don't have guns. Even robbers don't have guns. And then here we
have the ruler, the government asking its police to shoot its own
people using snipers, shooting people with real bullets in their
heads," Mhirsi explained.

Hundreds of protesters were killed, but you wouldn't have heard
anything about it on the state-run media. Twenty percent of Tunisians,
however, are on Facebook, and Facebook had pictures.

Asked how Facebook was used to spread word of the unrest, Mhirsi said,
"Facebook was the only video-sharing platform that was available to
Tunisians. And seeing videos of people shot with real bullets in their
heads on Facebook was shocking to many Tunisians."

Tunisia had been a battleground before, but that was a long time ago.
Hannibal, Carthaginians, Romans have all been there and all have left
their mark.

At the Kasserine Pass, the U.S. Army fought its first major battle
against the Germans in World War II and left nearly 3,000 soldiers
behind in a cemetery few Americans even know about.

Until last month, Ben Ali's Tunisia was calm. That's because the
police state he created worked, as political activist Sihem Ben
Sedrine discovered when she spoke out against Ben Ali and was
arrested.

"They put me face to...the ground, and it's a very big man. And he
started jumping on my neck, on, on my head, on my everywhere. And he
was jumping on me," she told Simon.

Asked if he wanted her to say something, she said, "No, no, no
nothing. It's just a punishment. You do not have the right to say no
to Ben Ali."

After her release, the police took to dumping sewage at her front door
and sabotaging her car.

"They cut the front brakes," she explained. "Twice. I had accident
because the brakes were cut."

The repression was complimented by corruption. That was the specialty
of Ben Ali's second wife, who was 20 years his junior and brought her
extended family into the presidential palace, turning the seat of
government into a mafia command post.

Mustapha Kamel Nabli was once a minister in Ben Ali's cabinet, then
went into exile. He's back now as the governor of Tunisia's Central
Bank.

"How much money do you think the Ben Ali family took for themselves
over the years?" Simon asked.

"It's significant. I think it's in the billions of dollars," Nabli said.

The Ben Alis blanketed the country with luxury villas. They kicked
people out of any other homes they liked. Investors, businessmen
couldn't do anything without giving the family a piece of the action.

"You haven't used the word 'bribe,'" Simon pointed out.

"Oh, it's worse than a bribe," Nabli said. "I mean it's blunt corruption."

The 74-year-old Ben Ali saw himself as president for life. And he
didn't want people to recognize that he wasn't getting any younger -
he dyed his hair.

"Mubarak had dyed hair, pure black. What is it about these dictators
in the Middle East and their dyed hair?" Simon asked.

"Those dictators try to look the way they looked when they took power,
so they make people forget the amount of time they spent ruling them,"
Zied Mhirsi said.

Ben Ali was taken aback by the outbreak of unrest. He tried to calm
people down with a PR campaign that was nothing short of grotesque. He
went to a Tunis hospital with his entourage and paid a bedside visit
to the fruit vendor Bouazizi, who was barely alive.

"That picture was shocking. You could see nothing of Bouazizi. He was
surrounded by band-aids like a mummy. Obviously, he was in a coma. And
then you have all these politicians coming inside the room," Mhirsi
told Simon.

Bouazizi died Jan. 4. Word went out on Facebook to take to the
streets. The message was received. On Jan. 14, tens of thousands
brought the nation's capital, Tunis, to a halt. Now the world started
paying attention.

"Degage" - get out - they shouted at Ben Ali.

Zied Mhirsi was there. "Oh it was fantastic to be there on that day.
There was everybody, young, poor, rich, educated, women, men, every
part of the Tunisian society was represented in that demonstration
that asked Ben Ali to get out," he remembered.

The protesters thought it was entirely possible that Ben Ali would
order the army to fire on them. But they didn't budge. To their
astonishment, it was Ben Ali who panicked. He fled the country and
went to Saudi Arabia.

"I think like the majority of the Tunisian people, we were in
disbelief. We were, like, 'He's gone.' It was just crazy. He left in
his plane and he's gone. Took us some time to realize it, I think. So,
yeah, we were free then," Mhirsi said.

It was the first time an Arab dictator had been toppled by his own people.

It didn't take long before the homes belonging to his extended family
were torched and looted. Today, they're tourist attractions, but not
for foreigners - for Tunisians themselves, a testament to what they've
accomplished.

There used to be pictures of Ben Ali everywhere. They're gone now,
almost. There's graffiti all over Tunis thanking Facebook for the
revolution. But more than anything else, it was the revolt of the
young.

"And it's your generation that went out and threw out this dictator,"
Simon said. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm getting the impression
that you're enjoying this."

"So much. So much," Mhirsi replied.

Today, Tunisia's small army is keeping the peace. Elections are due to
be held in six months. Meanwhile, there's something called an interim
government. And the new Secretary of State for Youth and Sport is
33-yr.-old Slim Amamou. He was one of the protesters. Now, he's really
learning about democracy.

"I have every day demonstrations in front of my office, and sometimes
even in my office," Amamou told Simon.

"You were one of the protesters. And now the protesters are protesting
against you," Simon remarked.

Bourguiba Avenue, Tunis' Champs-Elysees, once the place to see and be
seen, has become the place to speak and be heard.

Everybody wants something: the unemployed want jobs, students want
everyone from the old government sent packing, the tourist industry
wants to see people back on those beaches, and the West wants
Tunisians to behave themselves.

"You know that a lot of big countries in the world are worried that
it's going to get chaotic here. What do you say?" Simon asked Mhirsi.

"Oh, no, no, no, no. Definitely not. This country now is just on the
verge of becoming a developed one. Of joining the northern part of the
frontier. The Mediterranean frontier. And I can tell we're going to
become like Portugal in a couple of years," Mhirsi said.

"And your wine will be as good as Portuguese wine?" Simon asked.

"We've been making wine for 3,000 years. So, our wine is already
better, I would say," Mhirsi replied.

And Tunisians say they're proud to have been the pioneers of
revolution in the region.

"Every other autocratic leader in the Middle East is quivering and
it's all because of a fruit vendor in a small town in central
Tunisia," Simon remarked.

"It's like the little push you put on, like, a card game and then the
whole castle just falls apart. That little energy was from Bouazizi,"
Mhirsi said.

Two weeks ago, more than 1,000 people from the capital made a
pilgrimage to Sidi Bouzid, the fruit vender's home. They called it the
"Caravan of Thanks"

They wanted to pay tribute to the man and the unlikely town where it
all began. People said they were experiencing the deepest joy of their
lives. There's nothing like a revolution.

But the mother of the revolution didn't come to the parade. She stayed
at home, grieving for her son. Her only mementos: two posters on a
white wall.

Way out in Tunisia's hard scrabble countryside, there's a cemetery. A
Tunisian flag and a grey cement block mark Mohammed Bouazizi's resting
place. It's precarious to make predictions in this part of the world.
But here's one: before long, there will be monuments honoring him all
over the country.

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