Re: How a slap sparked Tunisia's revolution

Thanks for posting...great find!

regards,
-Lance

On Feb 21, 2011, at 9:50 AM, The Voice Of Objective Truth wrote:

> 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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