The Arab Revolution

Muhammad Bouazizi on fire
in protest

It began in the most unlikely of places. The liberal, westernised, relatively wealthy nation of Tunisia. Like many of the greatest events in history, a single symbolic action sparked of this revolution.

The man that history will remember for sparking the flame of hope that has led to this uprising is Muhammad Bouazizi (rest in peace). Bouazizi a 26 year old street vendor was on the 17th of December 2010 attacked, insulted and beaten by local police who also damaged his fruit cart and confiscated his electronic weighing scales. After his complaints were ignored by the police and the governor refused to even see him about the incident Bouazizi set himself alight in protest.

Protesters in Egypt

It was this once act that inspired a nation to rise against an unjust dictator. Finally the silent majority were no longer so quiet. The streets of Tunis erupted in protest, the people were demanding justice and and democracy. They were no longer willing to tolerate the ‘leadership’ of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who ruled Tunisia with an iron fist for the last 30 years. Between the 18th and 27th of December the protesting continued daily, growing and evolving into a national movement. In an attempt to curb the demonstrating the police crackdown resulted in the deaths of several protesters. Many deaths were caused by police firing tear gas canisters at protesting crowds and beating people in the streets as a form intimidation. There a were a few protesters that were so moved by Bouazizi’s sacrifice that they too set themselves on fire in protest and many ended up giving their lives for the freedom and liberty of their country and people.

After almost a month of relentless protest which saw hundreds of thousands of people expressing their dissatisfaction with the dictatorship that they feared for so long, the army turning against the man they kept in power and his own prime minister seizing power, Ben Ali fled the country on the 14th of January. The next day from the safety of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia he officially announced his resignation and a new era in Tunisian history. Muhammad Bouazizi did not live to witness the consequences of the revolution he began, he died of his wounds in hospital on the 4th of January.
 
The protests and resulting revolution in Tunisia inspired similar protests throughout the Arab world. The fire of hope has set the middle east alight with peaceful uprisings beginning in nearby Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Morocco, Sudan, Syria and Jordan. It seems that the time of the dictator is ending and the age of democracy in the Arab world is emerging.

Egyptian Dictator Hosni Mubarak with former Israeli 
foreign minister Tzipi Livni

Its the protests in Egypt that are now making the headlines. Suffering dictator after dictator of almost 60 years the people of Egypt will consent through silence no more. The current Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak has betrayed his people time and time again. All of his actions indicate that he values the political well being of the US and Israeli governments above the well being of his people. His own people are beaten, tortured and killed by the state, his government abandoned the people of Gaza to enprisonment, isolation, starvation, sanctions and genocide as well as preventing aid from crossing at the Rafah border but he is more than willing to bend over backwards for his masters in Washington and Tel Aviv.

President Obama at the Wailing Wall 
in Jerusalem, Israel

There is only one reason that the Egyptian dictatorship has survived this long and that is American support. It is the American tax dollars that are propping up this tyrant and the man providing the dollars is none other than Barack Hussien Obama, the nobel peace prize winner (2009). Obama who promised to extend the hand of peace to the Muslim world in his speech in Cairo ironically, he must now fulfil his pledge by allowing this tyrant to fall and a Muslim democratic state to arise and prosper inshallah (God willing)


 May the peoples of Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, Algeria, Sudan and the rest of the un-free world break the shackles of dictatorship and journey towards democracy, freedom and liberty. Down with Arab Dictators, Long Live Muslim Democracies inshallah.