On 17th Dec 2010, a street vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi, in Tunisia set himself on fire to protest the seizing of his vegetable-stand by police over failure to obtain a permit.
The street protests that followed became so violent that the authoritarian President, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled the country for 23 years had to flee to Saudi Arabia.
These intense protests, which lasted for 28 days, were considered a demonstration by people of their frustration against high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, lack of reforms, and poor living conditions.
This revolution in Tunisia was called the Jasmine Revolution by the western media because Jasmine is Tunisia’s national flower.
And it resulted in Tunisia’s first-ever democratic elections in Oct 2011, and Bouazizi – the street vendor – became a hero to many Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa.
5 countriesLibya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain saw major uprisings, where either the leader was removed or social violence occurred and at least 10 more countries saw small to medium scale protests over the next two years.
The name Arab Spring comes from the Revolutions of 1848, known as People’s Spring – when people across Europe protested to remove monarchies and demanded democracy.
Since then, “spring” has been used to describe movements toward democracy, e.g. Czechoslovakia’s Prague Spring in 1968.
