Mohammed Bouazizi and Aaron Bushnell: The Self-Immolation of Men and The Call For Revolution.
Read on…
It was Mohammed Bouazizi who forever reconfigured North Africa and the Middle East.
But he didn’t know it.
When the Tunisian street vendor decided to self-immolate to protest the municipal government’s stifling of his business, none of us around the world, who’d heard about his suicide, thought that anything would emerge from his actions.
But we were wrong.
By the time his funeral procession took to the streets of Tunis, it was clear that this was no ordinary protest: two million Facebook accounts were lit with images of Bouazizi’s actions, which only fuelled the anger on the streets.
And within a number of days, North Africa erupted in a way that it had never done before with the toppling of governments in quick succession, across Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen.
While it is worth pointing out that the Arab spring did not have a positive outcome with the disintegration of Libya, Yemen and the rise of ISIS, the events of 2011 did show that the will of the people should never be underestimated.
But let’s be clear: Mohammed Bouazizi wasn’t the first to take this extraordinary and extreme step.