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On December 17, 2010, ten years ago, a 26-year-old Tunisian greengrocer, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire in the central square of a small town in the interior of Tunisia. A few hours earlier, he had been mistreated by the police, who extorted money from him for months, because he did not have a proper license to sell their products in the market. Bouazizi died a few days later from burns. His death was the proverbial snowball that in the following days and weeks became an avalanche, causing the fall of ten-year regimes – such as Ben Ali’s Tunisian – and civil wars that continue today, and more generally the events that come. gathered under the label Arab Spring.
Bouazizi was born on March 29, 1984 in a very poor family in the town of Sidi Bouzid. His father worked in Libya as a bricklayer and died of a heart attack when Bouazizi was three years old. Mother Manoubia later married a brother of her husband, with whom she had six other children. Bouazizi started doing odd jobs from the age of ten to help her uncle, who had health problems, bring home some extra money. As a child he dropped out of school and began working full time as a fruit and vegetable peddler: he supported his mother, his uncle, his younger half-brothers, and paid for a sister’s university studies.
“When he was young he was a funny guy who laughed a lot,” his cousin Ali Bouazizi said recently. al Jazeera: “But in the last years of his life he had lost his sense of humor due to the stress that he suffered every day.” Ali Bouazizi said his cousin spent his days at work, from midnight until the next afternoon, to earn enough money to support his family. The greengrocer, however, was exasperated by the constant abuse and corruption of the local police, who every day asked all street vendors for bribes to let them do their jobs.
A 2011 article on Washington Post He said that on the night of December 16, 2010 Bouazizi was very satisfied with the dates, apples and oranges that he had bought: he was convinced that they were the most beautiful that he had ever seen, that he would do good business and that he could buy some gifts for His mother. The next day, two policemen stopped him as he was driving his cart to the market. His uncle complained to the local police commander, who ordered the policemen to let Bouazizi pass.
One of the two policemen, annoyed by the commander’s order, went to Bouazizi and demanded to obtain two boxes of apples: a kind of small bribe. Bouazizi refused and the police slapped and hit him in front of the other street vendors. Bouazizi, humiliated, tried to tell the local governor what happened, but did not find it in his office. Shortly afterwards it was doused with gasoline and set on fire.
On December 18, about 100 people gathered in front of the town hall to protest against the mistreatment of Bouazizi and the harassment of the police. This could have gone unnoticed if a cousin of the boy had not filmed the demonstration with his mobile phone and spread it on the Internet: from there it went viral on Facebook and ended in al Jazeera, who spoke about it throughout the Arab world.
Bouazizi died on January 4, just as the first phase of the protests was accumulating, which in the following months would spread to demonstrations against corruption and in favor of democracy in almost the entire Arab world, and which among other things would have place to war. civilization in Syria and the fall of the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Tunisian dictator Ben Ali visited Bouazizi in hospital and promised reforms, but was forced to resign and fled to Saudi Arabia in mid-January, where he died in 2019. He never returned to Tunisia.
Tunisia was the only country to emerge from the Arab Spring period with a democratic government, and for that it was an example around the world. In the years after his death, Bouazizi also received many celebrations: he was awarded the Sakharov prize for freedom of thought, he was chosen as the person of the year by the British newspaper Times, and a plaque and a mural were named after him at Sidi Bouzid.
Today, however, paradoxically, there are very few traces of his presence and of everything that happened afterwards. Sidi Bouzid remains a small and poor country in the interior, whose conditions have been aggravated by the pandemic and the economic crisis that the democratic government cannot solve. In Tunisia, economic growth has halved compared to 2010, and unemployment is a big problem, especially among the very young. “We have seen many foreign investors go elsewhere,” he told the guardian Youssef Cherif, director of a presidium of Columbia University in New York in Tunisia: “in places like Morocco or Egypt, where authoritarian governments can offer the same workforce but with fewer problems, less in demand from the social point of view “.
A woman who recently walked down the main street of Sidi Bouzid told the guardian that when he passes the Bouazizi mural he curses him: “it is he who has ruined us,” he says. The policewoman who beat Bouazizi still works in Sidi Bouzid, on the same streets she frequented ten years ago. None of the Bouazizi family members live in Sidi Bouzid anymore: Bouazizi’s mother and sister have moved to Canada and her half siblings live between Sfax and Tunisia. After Bouazizi’s death, they had received small sums of money from people close to him and the government, but this had caused tension with the other inhabitants of Sidi Bouzid. “Now everyone has a better life,” he said. al Jazeera Cousin of Bouazizi.
Where to ask for help
If you are in an emergency situation, call 112. If you or someone you know has suicidal thoughts, you can call the Amico Italia Telephone at 02 2327 2327 or via the internet from here, every day from 10 to 24.
You can also call the Samaritans toll free 800 86 00 22 from landline or to 06 77208977 from your mobile, every day from 1pm to 10pm.
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