26 March 2012. By Samuel Albert. Nadine Hammam knows something about tank girls. She was one of the iconic young women who scrambled onto a tank in Tahrir Square in January 2011, during the 18-day revolt that brought down Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
The protesters welcomed the soldiers. They thought the army was coming to their defence against Mubarak's murderous police and his civilian thugs hurling cinderblocks and rocks down on the square from the safety of surrounding rooftops and a motorway overpass. With hopes born of equal parts of illusion and desperation, many demonstrators chanted, "The army and the people are one hand." Yet the military failed to stop the rooftop assaults by surrounding and searching the buildings and overpass, or arresting the killers standing in plain sight. Instead soldiers stood by and watched.
Since Mubarak's resignation, the army has taken over the job of killing, torturing and imprisoning Egyptian youth and others who defy the ruling power in the streets. Those who risked and sacrificed so much for what they hoped would be a revolution have seen, instead, the spectre of an unholy, if uneasy and unpredictable, alignment between the US, the Muslim Brotherhood, remnants of the old regime and the military junta.
Hammam, an Egyptian artist born in 1974, says she'd like to take back her gesture of a year ago. "We were naïve to think the army was there to protect us." But in revisiting that moment in her current solo show at the Gallery Misr in Zamalek, across the Nile from Tahrir Square, she is not just looking back at lost illusions. The image of a young woman riding a tank that is the show's centrepiece reflects more than the bitter frustration of a revolt that got rid of a hated head of state but not the state structure he sat on and the economic and political relationships it represents. Her work also announces a determination to continue rebelling against much that is unacceptable in Egyptian society and the world. At a time when some people are saying that the Tahrir youth went too far and brought on themselves the backlash they now face, this piece is unrepentant.
Tank Girl, a large painting installation, has a room to itself in this show. The pink outlined figure of a pony-tailed young woman, done in smooth acrylic paint and shiny foil that suggests the muscles and blood vessels under her skin, sits astride the turret of a pink tank. The only detail in this silhouette portrait is her bright red bra. All Egyptians would understand this is a reference to – and joyous transformation of – the so-called "girl in the blue bra", the young woman stripped of her abaya and headscarf by military police who beat her with long batons and stomped on her chest in a Tahrir square protest against military rule last December.
This tank girl is not a humiliated victim. She has not lost her "honour" – her nakedness proclaims it. She and the stencilled tank are the same size; she not only rides it but has conquered it. From its cannon between her legs spurts a stream of rats, running down the side of the painting and the wall beneath, and fleeing across the gallery floor.
Hamman has offered different explanations of the significance of the rats, once saying that the military are rats and another time that the rats represent the country's panicked billionaires whom Mubarak and now the military serve and protect.
The artist wrote a statement on this piece: "You can beat us, strip us, gas us and virginity-test us, but in the end we will prevail."
The show also includes a series of paintings called Heartless, five silhouettes of women made of silver foil that speak to the way the reduction of women to their body parts impedes the human relationships they long for. These pieces are pretty in form, in a customary "feminine" style (in the choice of colours and the jewel trimmings highlighting the women's desirability and value), and violent in their content.
While Egyptian art has long included nude paintings of women by men, the situation has changed lately. Religiously-sanctioned "temporary" and secret "second" wives have been added to the possibilities offered rich men alongside Western-style mistresses. Females covered from head to toe are for sale on Cairo's streets. While women are still supposed to be sexual playthings (and breeders) in private, in public – and now often in the arts – they must cover the hair that assaults men with sinful thoughts. The bodies for which they are prized are considered dangerous to public order.
There is a growing, widely-felt danger that whatever some people consider Islamic standards are going to be enforced on all, by law, intimidation or simply the silent acceptance of custom and tradition. A photographer documenting a traditional neighbourhood's history found that he could not make portraits of women for public display – his show includes pictures of local women in decades past but not today. Adel Imam, one of Arab cinema's most famous actors, has been convicted in absentia and sentenced to three months hard labour for “offending Islam” in his film and stage roles. The late Nobel prize-winning novelist Naguib Mafouz is reviled as simply a purveyor of pornography.
In part this is because the morality associated with the West and Mubarak's regime has become so utterly exposed and hated, but what's being offered, supposedly in opposition, is also reactionary. It's not a minor fact that Persepolis, an autobiographical animated film recounting the violent collision between a rebellious Iranian girl from a secular family and the Islamic Republic, can no longer be shown in Egypt or Tunisia, banned not by law or decree, or even, ostensibly, because of its political content, as in Iran, but by social pressure because it is considered "blasphemous". Under the cover of not "offending" religious sensibilities, many people who seek social change confuse people's right to practice their religion with religion's demand for the "right" to define society.
On occasion this has provoked women artists and other women in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries to portray themselves naked as a scream of protest. When the blogger and political activist Alias El-Mahdy posted a photo of her naked self online last October, she was denounced as if she had committed the worst crime imaginable, an evil much of the country could unite against, as if a woman taking off her own clothes was far more dangerous to the prevailing society than what soldiers have been doing to women in public and private. Women in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, including Iran and Israel, posted group portraits of themselves naked and holding banners in solidarity with her.
It tells us something about the current cowardice among some Egyptian intellectuals that Hammam's show has been attacked for dealing with sex and nudity, not just from the predictable religious authorities but also from some cynical critics identified with global art culture and Western publications. They accuse her of choosing her topics because "sex sells" and her work is selling very well right now, along with setting off a big ruckus in the media.
But as the other work in this exhibition underlines, this is more than topical art, and the opposite of porn, soft-core or otherwise. The flatness and anonymity of her female figures – ironically achieved only by many layers of paint – references the way that women are flattened by the dominant role played by the men in their lives from birth to death, and robbed of their identity as they are turned into fungible commodities. Even in her more "sexual" two previous gallery shows in Cairo, Aikl Aish (Making a Living, 2008) and I'm for Sale (2010), her portrayals of women as they have been rendered by the male gaze are more disquieting than erotic. They challenge the prevailing relations between men and women by revealing the power relations and commodity exchange that shape them.
Hammam's work is closely linked to its context. Her exhibition is taking place in a city where the tanks and armoured cars have now become a common sight downtown. It opened on 8 March, International Women's Day, as hundreds of women marched on parliament. Their official demands were confined to admitting more women to the committee writing a new constitution (in which a main debate is preserving the unbearable status quo for women or instituting Sharia law) and a parliament that has been little but a fig leaf for the military and its increasing subservience to the US. But video footage of the marchers, covered and uncovered alike, and interviews, seem to reveal a deeper and potentially explosive dissatisfaction.
Shortly after, on 11 March, an army court acquitted a military doctor accused of performing "virginity tests" on seven women arrested when the army broke up a Tahrir sit-in a year ago. Few people expected any other outcome from a trial of the military by the military (lawyers for the civilian plaintiffs were not allowed to take part). The military has concluded that a civilian court ruling that the army must cease these deliberately degrading practices cannot be applied because now it has been "proven" that they never happened in the first place!
A military spokesman reaffirmed that the army will continue to regard women taking part in political activity as suspected prostitutes and "who knows, even spies". To hide its obsequiousness to the US, the military often labels its critics Israeli agents. This is especially convincing to people who consider that the essence of the Palestinian question is Israel versus Islam, so that anyone considered anti-Islamic must be pro-Israel.
Yet at the same time Hammam's work is not narrowly topical at all. It can have universal meaning, long after today's events. In part, this is because it strains against a fatally false dichotomy that has become all too widely accepted: either you are a "real Egyptian" (and therefore worship all the backward institutions and traditions that weigh down on the people, and in fact have often been bolstered by the country's occupiers and oppressors, including the US today), or you are subservient to the fashions and values prevailing in the West and don't care for the Egyptian masses.
One of the striking features of Hammam's work, as textured intellectually as it is technically, is that she links the particular situation of women in Egypt with women's universal status as lesser beings. If anything, in addition to deliberately riling up backward forces in her own country, her work is especially critical of Western culture, where women's worth is even more clearly determined by their value as commodities, often even in their own eyes.
Artists and the art public may be a very small segment of Egyptian society (as some critics take malign pleasure in pointing out), but the issues Hammam addresses touch all women and are basic to the question of what kind of society Egypt will be. What has been identified as an upsurge among Egyptian artists a year after Mubarak's downfall may be happening now because they were too busy in the streets to work in their studios until today's relative lull. It is also, very likely, an explosion of expression in the field of art of sentiments that have been deeply frustrated and, right now, are having difficulty finding a political outlet.
….....
Cairo artists have launched a campaign to "open" the seven concrete barricades the military erected around the Ministry of the Interior and other sinister sites of power by "painting through the walls." They called on neighbourhood residents to come into the streets to take part starting on 9 March, the anniversary of the day when the army first attacked Tahrir square and inflicted the "virginity tests". Hammam's work and some of these wall paintings can be seen and are discussed on the following English-language Web sites:
- http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/5/25/36357/Arts--Culture/Visual-Art/Tank-Girl-challenges-military-rule,-patriarchal-so.asp
- http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/5/35/36132/Arts—Culture/Stage--Street/Activists-and-artists-to-paint-protest-murals-on-S.aspx
- http://www.cntraveler.com/arts/2012/03/egypt-cairo-revolution-women-in-art#slide=1
- http://artforum.com/words/id=30394
- http://www.almasryalyoum.com/node/700566
- www.egyptindependent.com/node/70469
- www.egyptindependent.com/node/723496
Posts mit dem Label Samuel Albert werden angezeigt. Alle Posts anzeigen
Posts mit dem Label Samuel Albert werden angezeigt. Alle Posts anzeigen
Montag, 2. April 2012
Samstag, 21. Januar 2012
Egypt: trial of strength continues
19 December 2011. A World to Win News Service. By Samuel Albert. An Egyptian army attack on an occupation in front of the cabinet building near Tahrir Square 15 December set off yet another explosion of revolt.
Since the fact that the protesters numbered only a few hundred and sometimes less, Egypt's ruling military and their media called them an isolated minority. They probably figured they could easily crush this small but persistent sign of defiance. Yet the harder the military tried to break the rebels' back, the more support for the rebels swelled. The military found itself if not isolated, then at least losing ground.
Protesters have occupied Tahrir Square or nearby areas for a month now, at a cost so far of about 55 dead, many hundreds of serious injuries and arrests that bring torture and prison. Their numbers have ebbed and flowed from a few dozen at some moments to hundreds, often thousands and at one point tens of thousands. A major demonstration has been called for 23 December.
The movement seemed at a low point on 19 November when police swooped down on Tahrir at dawn to drive out a small group that had set up tents there. Over the next few days possession of the the square went back and forth between the police and the protesters, as young reinforcements and older activists poured in, culminating in a huge and triumphant rally. Then came days of hard fighting as youth attacked the nearby Interior Ministry building.
Along with clubs, tear gas and gunfire, the military also deployed political manoeuvres to stop the protests. They discarded their faceless prime minister and put in a more experienced politician, Kamal Gonzouri, once PM under President Hosni Mubarak before distancing himself from the regime that Tahrir brought down last February. They also held parliamentary elections and promised that next year would see a civilian president.
The smaller numbers of protesters who persisted during and after the elections moved from Tahrir to the nearby cabinet building, where they symbolically blocked the nomination of a new cabinet. They demanded Gonzouri's resignation and an immediate end to military rule.
On 15 December soldiers beat up individuals leaving the sit-in. A young man was kidnapped, taken into the adjacent parliament building and tortured. This brutality brought more demonstrators and fighting began. At dawn the next day military police attacked, firing shots into the air. Using tactics seen repeatedly in the last year, men on the rooftops of government buildings, some in uniform, pelted the crowd below with lethal objects – stones, tiles, wooden panels and furniture. People began throwing stones back at the troops on the ground.
The soldiers seized about 20 people and took them into the parliament building. They were beaten with clubs and iron bars and given electric shocks. Among them were a leading young woman activist and an Al Jazeera reporter. They did the same to a new young Member of Parliament who had signed a complaint against the head of the military junta, Field Marshall Tantawi. While torturing him they yelled, "This is what we think of your … parliament."
Eight members of the advisory council the military had just appointed to give itself a civilian cover resigned in protest against what they called the military's attacks on non-violent demonstrators. The rest voted to stop meeting.
A senior Muslim scholar who had come to show his solidarity with the protesters was shot in the heart, apparently by military police. Nine other people were also shot, two of them killed, according to the Health Ministry. The popular cleric's funeral the next day brought together thousands of people, including leading Muslim and Coptic Christian religious authorities and secular activists. Then they marched to Tahrir Square.
Fighting continued in front of the parliamentary building, and soldiers repeatedly charged the square. They invaded field hospitals set up in nearby mosques and churches, burning medical equipment, arresting doctors and carrying off patients.
They also burst into apartments and hotel rooms overlooking the square to smash and steal reporters' cameras and other equipment. On the ground anyone with a camera became a target.
Nevertheless, unbearably shocking footage was soon posted on the Net. Several clips show groups of soldiers surrounding, beating and stomping on a fallen demonstrator and then dragging the unconscious or dead body away. One shows a charging soldier drawing a pistol and shooting into a group of retreating people. Photos of mutilated bodies bear witness to the soldiers' savagery.
Although the fighting in front of the parliamentary buildings mainly involved young men and boys, there were women in the square, and they seemed to be targeted with a special fury. Probably the best-known video of the 17 December assaults shows soldiers grabbing a young woman by her head scarf and stripping her half naked. A soldier can be seen raising a booted foot to kick her in the stomach as she is dragged away. In another a well-known older woman activist is seen standing by herself, watching. Soldiers surround her and begin to club her, dragging her away as well.
At some point a petrol bomb hit the Egyptian national archives next to the parliament building where both sides were hurling them. Soldiers attacked demonstrators who tried to put out the fire and carry some of the documents to safety. The contents of the archives go back to the records of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798.
Compelled to issue a political self-defence, a spokesman for the military council denied that soldiers had clubbed or shot anyone, and proclaimed that the demonstrators were not "the youth of the revolution." This was interpreted as a reference to the large number of apparently lower class youth at the centre of the fighting, just as they were during the first Tahrir revolt that toppled Mubarak. He also said that the violence was caused by "counter-revolutionaries" and a "foreign hand", a reference to Israel and/or Mubarak regime remnants who are supposedly paying poor youth and street children to riot. This might seem like a bit much coming from a military that was built up by the US for the purpose of, among other things, protecting Israel from the Egyptian people, but portraying itself as the protector of the nation (and now the "revolution") has long been a core part of the Egyptian army's political strategy.
Although by 19 December the army had brought in the Central Security Forces, Mubarak's supposedly "civilian" anti-protest police, these clashes were unusual in that for most of the time the army alone conducted the fighting. The first time that this happened on such a large scale was in October, when soldiers assaulted marchers protesting attacks on Coptic Christians, killing 27 people. Such open people/army confrontations represent a political problem for the military, which has tried to distance itself from the almost universally hated police and claim that its solders are present at demonstrations to protect demonstrators.
These events have also been problematic for Egypt's rulers in that once again the country's turbulent political configuration has been centred on Tahrir Square. The fighting in the streets has been the main event, while the parliamentary elections taking place at the same time have been a sideshow. This is no minor setback, since the electoral process was supposed to produce a regime with some legitimacy in a country where over the last year authority at every level came to be not only despised but defied and often driven out, starting at the top and working down. The army certainly has the power, but the naked injustice of its violence has gravely tarnished the legitimacy it can't do without.
This is probably why US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was "deeply concerned" by the violence, although she attributed it to both sides, as if it were not the Egyptian regime and it alone that is attacking and killing civilians. For an official fond of calling for sanctions and bombardment of other Middle Eastern governments not to Washington's liking, it is notable that she did not threaten to cut off the US life support system for Egypt's living dead generals.
Egyptian reactionaries have tried to take up a slogan of the Occupy movement in the US and turn it upside down, taunting the Tahrir occupiers by proclaiming "We are the 97 percent, you are the 3 percent", a reference to the fact that the leftist political parties won about 3.5 percent of the seats in the first round of parliamentary elections. This is not an accurate picture of a complex and contradictory situation.
A Gallup poll conducted earlier this year proclaimed that most people had confidence in the army (not necessarily the ruling generals), but also found that almost everyone considered violence against civilians never justified, a figure not matched by Gallup surveys taken in Israel and the US, for example.
Further, there seems to be an enormous gap between many people's deepest aspirations and the political choices they feel that practicality dictates. When the regime has attacked the Tahrir rebels, the resulting polarization for-or-against Tahrir, and especially for-or-against violent repression of Tahrir, has not been favourable for the military.
So far, the military has sought to deal with this by trying to crush the rebels. They have not exhausted their potential for killing.
Some of the people arrested, tortured or shot have been well-known activists and regime enemies. The murdered cleric, Sheik Emad Effat, for example, was popular for opposing Mubarak, the junta and the authorities who dominate the religious establishment. The concern that the generals may be targeting specific iconic individuals increased when a member of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) speaking on television denounced Mohamed Hashem, the owner of Merit Publishing, as one of a handful of people behind the violence. Hashem is well-regarded in Egypt and the Arab world for his iconoclastic secularism and personal courage as well as his literary perspicacity. His standing among intellectuals is matched by the affection of Tahrir youth he sheltered in his offices near the square. Accused of handing out helmets and gas masks to youth battling soldiers, he simply replied that he would never stop helping revolutionaries. A number of artists and other prominent people signed an emergency "statement of appreciation" supporting him against the military.
But the army's political strength has not been exhausted, not only among those who fear social change but also among many who yearn for it. Even among people who consider themselves deeply committed to what they think Tahrir stands for, many feel that the military is their only hope to stop the Islamists from imposing a fully religious state.
In this highly complex situation, it is true that the various reactionary forces – including the military, the Islamists and the proudly pro-Western representatives of Egypt's private sector big capitalists – are not united. In fact, the Tahrir movement has made it harder for the people's enemies to unite. For instance, right now neither the Islamists nor secular politicians care to be associated with the SCAF, although they have demonstrated their appetite to share its power. One reason why the military employs elderly Mubarak regime members as its civilian figureheads is that no one else wants the job. The revival of the revolt has somewhat spoiled the party for the Muslim Brotherhood, the big winner in the elections for a parliament that is in danger of being discredited before it is even seated. But the Brotherhood has continued to portray itself as the the only party that can restore order.
Such divisions among the reactionaries were a source of dangerous illusions among the people when the military dumped Mubarak. They still are, even though people have gone from chanting "The people and the army are one hand" at the time of Mubarak's downfall last February to "The people want the downfall of the army" and even "The people want the execution of Tantawi" today.
But these divisions – and the persistent crisis of legitimacy that exists in a dynamic relationship with that – also still represent a favourable set of circumstances for the emergence of an entirely different political pole: a movement seeking not to reconfigure but to overthrow the existing power structure and establish a revolutionary state, one that could build an entirely different kind of society able to satisfy the people's deepest interests and aspirations. The emergence of that kind of clearly defined and scientifically guided revolutionary movement could completely transform the current political landscape.
Since the fact that the protesters numbered only a few hundred and sometimes less, Egypt's ruling military and their media called them an isolated minority. They probably figured they could easily crush this small but persistent sign of defiance. Yet the harder the military tried to break the rebels' back, the more support for the rebels swelled. The military found itself if not isolated, then at least losing ground.
Protesters have occupied Tahrir Square or nearby areas for a month now, at a cost so far of about 55 dead, many hundreds of serious injuries and arrests that bring torture and prison. Their numbers have ebbed and flowed from a few dozen at some moments to hundreds, often thousands and at one point tens of thousands. A major demonstration has been called for 23 December.
The movement seemed at a low point on 19 November when police swooped down on Tahrir at dawn to drive out a small group that had set up tents there. Over the next few days possession of the the square went back and forth between the police and the protesters, as young reinforcements and older activists poured in, culminating in a huge and triumphant rally. Then came days of hard fighting as youth attacked the nearby Interior Ministry building.
Along with clubs, tear gas and gunfire, the military also deployed political manoeuvres to stop the protests. They discarded their faceless prime minister and put in a more experienced politician, Kamal Gonzouri, once PM under President Hosni Mubarak before distancing himself from the regime that Tahrir brought down last February. They also held parliamentary elections and promised that next year would see a civilian president.
The smaller numbers of protesters who persisted during and after the elections moved from Tahrir to the nearby cabinet building, where they symbolically blocked the nomination of a new cabinet. They demanded Gonzouri's resignation and an immediate end to military rule.
On 15 December soldiers beat up individuals leaving the sit-in. A young man was kidnapped, taken into the adjacent parliament building and tortured. This brutality brought more demonstrators and fighting began. At dawn the next day military police attacked, firing shots into the air. Using tactics seen repeatedly in the last year, men on the rooftops of government buildings, some in uniform, pelted the crowd below with lethal objects – stones, tiles, wooden panels and furniture. People began throwing stones back at the troops on the ground.
The soldiers seized about 20 people and took them into the parliament building. They were beaten with clubs and iron bars and given electric shocks. Among them were a leading young woman activist and an Al Jazeera reporter. They did the same to a new young Member of Parliament who had signed a complaint against the head of the military junta, Field Marshall Tantawi. While torturing him they yelled, "This is what we think of your … parliament."
Eight members of the advisory council the military had just appointed to give itself a civilian cover resigned in protest against what they called the military's attacks on non-violent demonstrators. The rest voted to stop meeting.
A senior Muslim scholar who had come to show his solidarity with the protesters was shot in the heart, apparently by military police. Nine other people were also shot, two of them killed, according to the Health Ministry. The popular cleric's funeral the next day brought together thousands of people, including leading Muslim and Coptic Christian religious authorities and secular activists. Then they marched to Tahrir Square.
Fighting continued in front of the parliamentary building, and soldiers repeatedly charged the square. They invaded field hospitals set up in nearby mosques and churches, burning medical equipment, arresting doctors and carrying off patients.
They also burst into apartments and hotel rooms overlooking the square to smash and steal reporters' cameras and other equipment. On the ground anyone with a camera became a target.
Nevertheless, unbearably shocking footage was soon posted on the Net. Several clips show groups of soldiers surrounding, beating and stomping on a fallen demonstrator and then dragging the unconscious or dead body away. One shows a charging soldier drawing a pistol and shooting into a group of retreating people. Photos of mutilated bodies bear witness to the soldiers' savagery.
Although the fighting in front of the parliamentary buildings mainly involved young men and boys, there were women in the square, and they seemed to be targeted with a special fury. Probably the best-known video of the 17 December assaults shows soldiers grabbing a young woman by her head scarf and stripping her half naked. A soldier can be seen raising a booted foot to kick her in the stomach as she is dragged away. In another a well-known older woman activist is seen standing by herself, watching. Soldiers surround her and begin to club her, dragging her away as well.
At some point a petrol bomb hit the Egyptian national archives next to the parliament building where both sides were hurling them. Soldiers attacked demonstrators who tried to put out the fire and carry some of the documents to safety. The contents of the archives go back to the records of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798.
Compelled to issue a political self-defence, a spokesman for the military council denied that soldiers had clubbed or shot anyone, and proclaimed that the demonstrators were not "the youth of the revolution." This was interpreted as a reference to the large number of apparently lower class youth at the centre of the fighting, just as they were during the first Tahrir revolt that toppled Mubarak. He also said that the violence was caused by "counter-revolutionaries" and a "foreign hand", a reference to Israel and/or Mubarak regime remnants who are supposedly paying poor youth and street children to riot. This might seem like a bit much coming from a military that was built up by the US for the purpose of, among other things, protecting Israel from the Egyptian people, but portraying itself as the protector of the nation (and now the "revolution") has long been a core part of the Egyptian army's political strategy.
Although by 19 December the army had brought in the Central Security Forces, Mubarak's supposedly "civilian" anti-protest police, these clashes were unusual in that for most of the time the army alone conducted the fighting. The first time that this happened on such a large scale was in October, when soldiers assaulted marchers protesting attacks on Coptic Christians, killing 27 people. Such open people/army confrontations represent a political problem for the military, which has tried to distance itself from the almost universally hated police and claim that its solders are present at demonstrations to protect demonstrators.
These events have also been problematic for Egypt's rulers in that once again the country's turbulent political configuration has been centred on Tahrir Square. The fighting in the streets has been the main event, while the parliamentary elections taking place at the same time have been a sideshow. This is no minor setback, since the electoral process was supposed to produce a regime with some legitimacy in a country where over the last year authority at every level came to be not only despised but defied and often driven out, starting at the top and working down. The army certainly has the power, but the naked injustice of its violence has gravely tarnished the legitimacy it can't do without.
This is probably why US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was "deeply concerned" by the violence, although she attributed it to both sides, as if it were not the Egyptian regime and it alone that is attacking and killing civilians. For an official fond of calling for sanctions and bombardment of other Middle Eastern governments not to Washington's liking, it is notable that she did not threaten to cut off the US life support system for Egypt's living dead generals.
Egyptian reactionaries have tried to take up a slogan of the Occupy movement in the US and turn it upside down, taunting the Tahrir occupiers by proclaiming "We are the 97 percent, you are the 3 percent", a reference to the fact that the leftist political parties won about 3.5 percent of the seats in the first round of parliamentary elections. This is not an accurate picture of a complex and contradictory situation.
A Gallup poll conducted earlier this year proclaimed that most people had confidence in the army (not necessarily the ruling generals), but also found that almost everyone considered violence against civilians never justified, a figure not matched by Gallup surveys taken in Israel and the US, for example.
Further, there seems to be an enormous gap between many people's deepest aspirations and the political choices they feel that practicality dictates. When the regime has attacked the Tahrir rebels, the resulting polarization for-or-against Tahrir, and especially for-or-against violent repression of Tahrir, has not been favourable for the military.
So far, the military has sought to deal with this by trying to crush the rebels. They have not exhausted their potential for killing.
Some of the people arrested, tortured or shot have been well-known activists and regime enemies. The murdered cleric, Sheik Emad Effat, for example, was popular for opposing Mubarak, the junta and the authorities who dominate the religious establishment. The concern that the generals may be targeting specific iconic individuals increased when a member of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) speaking on television denounced Mohamed Hashem, the owner of Merit Publishing, as one of a handful of people behind the violence. Hashem is well-regarded in Egypt and the Arab world for his iconoclastic secularism and personal courage as well as his literary perspicacity. His standing among intellectuals is matched by the affection of Tahrir youth he sheltered in his offices near the square. Accused of handing out helmets and gas masks to youth battling soldiers, he simply replied that he would never stop helping revolutionaries. A number of artists and other prominent people signed an emergency "statement of appreciation" supporting him against the military.
But the army's political strength has not been exhausted, not only among those who fear social change but also among many who yearn for it. Even among people who consider themselves deeply committed to what they think Tahrir stands for, many feel that the military is their only hope to stop the Islamists from imposing a fully religious state.
In this highly complex situation, it is true that the various reactionary forces – including the military, the Islamists and the proudly pro-Western representatives of Egypt's private sector big capitalists – are not united. In fact, the Tahrir movement has made it harder for the people's enemies to unite. For instance, right now neither the Islamists nor secular politicians care to be associated with the SCAF, although they have demonstrated their appetite to share its power. One reason why the military employs elderly Mubarak regime members as its civilian figureheads is that no one else wants the job. The revival of the revolt has somewhat spoiled the party for the Muslim Brotherhood, the big winner in the elections for a parliament that is in danger of being discredited before it is even seated. But the Brotherhood has continued to portray itself as the the only party that can restore order.
Such divisions among the reactionaries were a source of dangerous illusions among the people when the military dumped Mubarak. They still are, even though people have gone from chanting "The people and the army are one hand" at the time of Mubarak's downfall last February to "The people want the downfall of the army" and even "The people want the execution of Tantawi" today.
But these divisions – and the persistent crisis of legitimacy that exists in a dynamic relationship with that – also still represent a favourable set of circumstances for the emergence of an entirely different political pole: a movement seeking not to reconfigure but to overthrow the existing power structure and establish a revolutionary state, one that could build an entirely different kind of society able to satisfy the people's deepest interests and aspirations. The emergence of that kind of clearly defined and scientifically guided revolutionary movement could completely transform the current political landscape.
Samstag, 3. Dezember 2011
Egypt: The importance of holding out in Tahrir Square
28 November 2011. A World to Win News Service. By Samuel Albert. As Egypt's ruling military tried to shift the country's conflicts to the electoral arena, many youth and others remained in Tahrir Square in an occupation that has cost at least 42 lives and several thousand wounded so far.
The next few days will tell whether the Tahrir protesters can manage to remain in the square if a "government of national salvation" headed by leading civilian presidential candidates is installed. Their stubbornness through the last 11 days, despite the combination of armed terror and promises of change through voting unleashed against them, took the political initiative away from the armed forces and once again put these young rebels at the centre of unfolding events, much as in the days when they sparked the revolt that toppled Mubarak.
The current battles began on the morning of 19 November when military police attacked a small group of those wounded in the original revolt who had camped in a grassy area overnight. Day after day since then, the regime tried to clear the occupation with volley after volley of tear gas and shotgun-propelled projectiles. Yet the protesters not only stood their ground but even mounted wave after wave of counter-attacks on the Interior Ministry on Mohamed Mahmoud street a few blocks away from the square.
In response to friends abroad, a young pharmacist sent an e-mail from the square: "I am OK but I have two young friends, one who died already and one who is in intensive care, shot in the head, and another who lost an eye and one who lost two eyes... This massacre is revealing the ugly face of the system and has turned this into a totally people's movement, and we are trying to catch up with that. We are in Tahrir all the time, trying to be creative in our contact with the people and getting a lot of sympathy from the people still at home."
This sentiment was repeated by others: what enabled them to stay in Tahrir Square this long has not been mainly personal courage, although there was an enormous amount of that, but the feeling that what they were doing was touching a deep chord among people all over the country and was therefore worth the sacrifice. They are also aware that the world is watching them and that their actions are in resonance with the Occupy movements in the US, UK and elsewhere. People in Tahrir know about actions in support of the Egyptian revolt that have been held in a number of American and British cities. (See nomiltrials.org)
Egyptian society is much more obviously divided than at any time since Mubarak's fall. In the name of defending the anti-Mubarak "revolution", the military is attacking the youth who drove Mubarak out. The main Islamist groups have come out against the young rebels, and many ordinary people are unsure and sometimes hostile. Commentators opposed to the revolt emphasize the conflict between "the street" (majority opinion) and "the square" (Tahrir). Yet so many people across society have shown such strong sympathy and even active support for the rebels that for the last 11 days the military has been unable to put an end to the political stalemate and the standoff around the square.
On Friday 25 November, the occupiers' numbers swelled into the tens of thousands as they were joined by various organized contingents, including people from various kinds of universities and neighbourhoods, and women chanting slogans against the Islamist parties. One feeder march was led by a young man who had lost one eye in the January and February revolt and the other eye just now. The rally brought out a socially mixed crowd of men and women, in contrast to the generally poorer young men and boys fighting the police near the Interior Ministry. (For a sharply drawn portrait of the various segments of protesters, see "The battle of Cairo's Muhammad Mahmoud Street" by Lucie Ryzova on the Al Jazeera Web site.)
That same evening a few thousand counter-demonstrators gathered at another centre-city square to chant, "Down with Tahrir, yes to the military council."
In a very unusual gesture, the chief imam of Al-Azhar mosque, Sunni Islam's highest religious authority, issued a statement of support for the Tahrir protesters.
The fear of public opinion has even forced the military – or at least two generals speaking in the name of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) – to express "regrets and deep apologies for the deaths of the martyrs from among Egypt's loyal sons during recent events in Tahrir Square."
But at the same time a military court has ordered another 15 days of detention for blogger Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who had already spent a month in prison. He now faces a trial before a special state security court. Another blogger, Maikel Nabil, sentenced to three years in prison for writing "The army and the people were never one hand", has been on hunger strike for almost a hundred days and his retrial has been postponed. It seems that the military's plan for dealing with public opinion includes crushing opposing opinion-makers.
SCAF tried to undermine support for the Tahrir Square rebels by removing the entire cabinet they themselves had appointed to provide themselves with a civilian face. Their new chosen prime minister was Kamal El-Ganzouri, a US-trained economist who served in the same post under Mubarak at the end of the 1990s. When news of Ganzouri's appointment reached the 25 November rally, the crowd roared its rejection.
The mood was celebratory that night, because the regime seemed to be retreating both politically and in the streets around the square. People set off the coloured fireworks seen at football games. The next morning, however, when young men and women staged a sit-in in front of the cabinet building to prevent El-Ganzouri from entering, a military vehicle ran over and killed one of them, 21-year-old Ahmed Sayed. Thousands more people came to Tahrir Square the next day, 27 November, despite the first hard rain of winter. As the polls opened the next day, their numbers dwindled, with sentiments divided between boycotting the elections (mainly in hopes of holding future elections under a civilian government) and reluctantly voting now (mainly to hold back an Islamist victory).
The medical situation reveals much about the political line-up. Many doctors and other medical personnel have come to the aid of the protesters and young fighters, setting up about a dozen field hospitals in the square itself. During the revolt last January and February such hospitals were set up because of fears that the public hospital administration would report or turn over the wounded to the police. This spirit of a necessary alternative to official institutions is still at work.
The police have made these medical tents a special target for tear gas and arson. A young woman doctor died of suffocation when huge clouds of tear gas engulfed the tent where she was working. A devout Muslim, she was said to be a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, a party that is particularly strong in the doctors' association and that called for its members to stay away from Tahrir. Reportedly there has been no shortage of medical personnel or even supplies in Tahrir, thanks to continuing donations.
Medical attention has become more crucial than ever because of the use of new police tactics – shooting to blind people with birdshot pellets and rubber and plastic bullets. This is apparent in videos of the casualties showing wounds in the upper chest and face. One regular hospital alone reported admitting 60 people with eye injuries in the week leading up to 27 November. Their wounds included burst corneas, burst eye sockets and foreign bodies in the eye. A volunteer doctor working in the field hospital nearest to Mohamed Mahmoud Street leading from Tahrir to the Interior Ministry reported that he treated about 25 people on the morning and afternoon of 25 November. Most had been shot in the upper area of the body, especially the face, with four people hit in the eyes with birdshot. (Report by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights)
Eyewitnesses say that police taunted protesters facing off against them, "If you want to lose your eye, come over here." A notorious video on Youtube shows a police officer firing on demonstrators in Mohamed Mahmoud Street. A soldier congratulates him, saying, "Nice shot, you hit that guy right in the eye." A blogger asked what kind of army, and what kind of society, would train its soldiers to think like that.
The authorities have not hesitated to kill – another video shows men in civilian clothing wielding long clubs apparently to finish off people left unconscious by police truncheons. But shooting people in the eyes seems to have become a deliberate policy meant to cause as much pain and terror as possible while avoiding greater numbers of politically problematic deaths. In addition, according to the same report, almost 400 people have been arrested and then beaten and otherwise abused in custody, including children.
Similarly, many of the fatalities have been attributed to tear gas. Questions have been raised about what exactly this tear gas contains, although examination of the spent cartridges found so far has not revealed anything that would make it more deadly than usual. Some medical experts speculate that the deaths are caused not by a more lethal variety of gas but its concentrated and sustained use over a long period. It may be that people are suffering from cumulative pulmonary, cardiac and other damage. So much gas has combined with the dust that usually coats this desert city that in much of the downtown the slightest gust of wind sets off coughing.
This gas is primarily supplied by the United States, as anyone can see by examining the markings on spent cartridges. The US provides the Egyptian military with 1.3 billion dollars a year in direct aid, amounting to two-thirds of total US funding for Egypt (money for civilian projects is no less harmful – US "aid" obliges Egyptians to depend on American wheat imports for their daily bread). US State Department records show that the US supplied 1.7 million dollars worth of "toxicological agents" – "including tear gas and riot control agents" in 2010 alone. (El Ahram Online, 25 November.)
Youth organizations have made public documents leaked to them by customs employees indicating that the US is now in the process of shipping the Egyptian Interior Ministry an additional 21 tons of tear gas. The second of three container ships was being unloaded in the port city of Suez when these documents were released on 28 November.
While the police are a civilian body, they are run by the Interior Ministry, which is under military control. The main police units attacking the protesters are from the Central Security Forces, responsible for most of the deaths in January and February. The members of this corps are recruited from among army conscripts who volunteer for the job. The armed forces claim that they have intervened to protect demonstrators from the police, but there have been many reports of army officers and military police accompanying other police in attacking Tahrir square and in defending the Interior Ministry, often surrounded by tanks. Now the military has put up a two-metre high wall of concrete slabs across Mohamed Mahmoud street.
The US has called for a "full transfer of power to a civilian government", a move that SCAF head Field Marshall Tantawi initially rejected. On 27 November he announced that no matter what the result of the elections, "the place of the army will remain exactly as it is. It will not change in any new constitution."
While Tahrir square is united around the chant, "The people want the fall of the field marshal", there is a prevailing lack of clarity about what kind of regime could be an alternative to military rule. SCAF has become as discredited as most of Egypt's political institutions, and there is not much hope for real change from the current elections. (We Are All Khaled Said, one of the main Facebook groups behind the original revolt, asked people to vote while wearing black badges in memory of the martyrs, a call that seems to reflect a mood of bleak acquiescence to the elections due to the lack of an alternative.) Yet few people envision a revolutionary overthrow of the entire state structure, including the armed forces. Instead, most would like to hope that somehow parliamentary elections or a constituent assembly – there is debate about which – could establish a rule of law that would somehow be above society. But the Egyptian ruling classes and the US imperialists they are beholden to would never respect any legal structure that didn't reflect their economic and political interests!
The viciousness of what the movement faces can be seen in the military tactics being used against them. These tactics are not only fully enabled by the US but also seem to be in line with Washington's political goals, which are to facilitate the emergence of a regime that would both continue to be subservient to US interests and enjoy enough legitimacy to get away with crushing the young rebels and their supporters. While there may be some conflict between SCAF and Washington, it is over how best to achieve this goal.
At the same time as SCAF was expressing its "regret" for deaths on its Facebook page, the American ambassador to Egypt used her Twitter account to announce that the US was donating 100,000 dollars in "humanitarian assistance for violence victims." In light of everything else the US has done in Egypt, including building up, sustaining and arming the Egyptian military, this is like gouging out someone's eyes and then offering them eye drops.
The next few days will tell whether the Tahrir protesters can manage to remain in the square if a "government of national salvation" headed by leading civilian presidential candidates is installed. Their stubbornness through the last 11 days, despite the combination of armed terror and promises of change through voting unleashed against them, took the political initiative away from the armed forces and once again put these young rebels at the centre of unfolding events, much as in the days when they sparked the revolt that toppled Mubarak.
The current battles began on the morning of 19 November when military police attacked a small group of those wounded in the original revolt who had camped in a grassy area overnight. Day after day since then, the regime tried to clear the occupation with volley after volley of tear gas and shotgun-propelled projectiles. Yet the protesters not only stood their ground but even mounted wave after wave of counter-attacks on the Interior Ministry on Mohamed Mahmoud street a few blocks away from the square.
In response to friends abroad, a young pharmacist sent an e-mail from the square: "I am OK but I have two young friends, one who died already and one who is in intensive care, shot in the head, and another who lost an eye and one who lost two eyes... This massacre is revealing the ugly face of the system and has turned this into a totally people's movement, and we are trying to catch up with that. We are in Tahrir all the time, trying to be creative in our contact with the people and getting a lot of sympathy from the people still at home."
This sentiment was repeated by others: what enabled them to stay in Tahrir Square this long has not been mainly personal courage, although there was an enormous amount of that, but the feeling that what they were doing was touching a deep chord among people all over the country and was therefore worth the sacrifice. They are also aware that the world is watching them and that their actions are in resonance with the Occupy movements in the US, UK and elsewhere. People in Tahrir know about actions in support of the Egyptian revolt that have been held in a number of American and British cities. (See nomiltrials.org)
Egyptian society is much more obviously divided than at any time since Mubarak's fall. In the name of defending the anti-Mubarak "revolution", the military is attacking the youth who drove Mubarak out. The main Islamist groups have come out against the young rebels, and many ordinary people are unsure and sometimes hostile. Commentators opposed to the revolt emphasize the conflict between "the street" (majority opinion) and "the square" (Tahrir). Yet so many people across society have shown such strong sympathy and even active support for the rebels that for the last 11 days the military has been unable to put an end to the political stalemate and the standoff around the square.
On Friday 25 November, the occupiers' numbers swelled into the tens of thousands as they were joined by various organized contingents, including people from various kinds of universities and neighbourhoods, and women chanting slogans against the Islamist parties. One feeder march was led by a young man who had lost one eye in the January and February revolt and the other eye just now. The rally brought out a socially mixed crowd of men and women, in contrast to the generally poorer young men and boys fighting the police near the Interior Ministry. (For a sharply drawn portrait of the various segments of protesters, see "The battle of Cairo's Muhammad Mahmoud Street" by Lucie Ryzova on the Al Jazeera Web site.)
That same evening a few thousand counter-demonstrators gathered at another centre-city square to chant, "Down with Tahrir, yes to the military council."
In a very unusual gesture, the chief imam of Al-Azhar mosque, Sunni Islam's highest religious authority, issued a statement of support for the Tahrir protesters.
The fear of public opinion has even forced the military – or at least two generals speaking in the name of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) – to express "regrets and deep apologies for the deaths of the martyrs from among Egypt's loyal sons during recent events in Tahrir Square."
But at the same time a military court has ordered another 15 days of detention for blogger Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who had already spent a month in prison. He now faces a trial before a special state security court. Another blogger, Maikel Nabil, sentenced to three years in prison for writing "The army and the people were never one hand", has been on hunger strike for almost a hundred days and his retrial has been postponed. It seems that the military's plan for dealing with public opinion includes crushing opposing opinion-makers.
SCAF tried to undermine support for the Tahrir Square rebels by removing the entire cabinet they themselves had appointed to provide themselves with a civilian face. Their new chosen prime minister was Kamal El-Ganzouri, a US-trained economist who served in the same post under Mubarak at the end of the 1990s. When news of Ganzouri's appointment reached the 25 November rally, the crowd roared its rejection.
The mood was celebratory that night, because the regime seemed to be retreating both politically and in the streets around the square. People set off the coloured fireworks seen at football games. The next morning, however, when young men and women staged a sit-in in front of the cabinet building to prevent El-Ganzouri from entering, a military vehicle ran over and killed one of them, 21-year-old Ahmed Sayed. Thousands more people came to Tahrir Square the next day, 27 November, despite the first hard rain of winter. As the polls opened the next day, their numbers dwindled, with sentiments divided between boycotting the elections (mainly in hopes of holding future elections under a civilian government) and reluctantly voting now (mainly to hold back an Islamist victory).
The medical situation reveals much about the political line-up. Many doctors and other medical personnel have come to the aid of the protesters and young fighters, setting up about a dozen field hospitals in the square itself. During the revolt last January and February such hospitals were set up because of fears that the public hospital administration would report or turn over the wounded to the police. This spirit of a necessary alternative to official institutions is still at work.
The police have made these medical tents a special target for tear gas and arson. A young woman doctor died of suffocation when huge clouds of tear gas engulfed the tent where she was working. A devout Muslim, she was said to be a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, a party that is particularly strong in the doctors' association and that called for its members to stay away from Tahrir. Reportedly there has been no shortage of medical personnel or even supplies in Tahrir, thanks to continuing donations.
Medical attention has become more crucial than ever because of the use of new police tactics – shooting to blind people with birdshot pellets and rubber and plastic bullets. This is apparent in videos of the casualties showing wounds in the upper chest and face. One regular hospital alone reported admitting 60 people with eye injuries in the week leading up to 27 November. Their wounds included burst corneas, burst eye sockets and foreign bodies in the eye. A volunteer doctor working in the field hospital nearest to Mohamed Mahmoud Street leading from Tahrir to the Interior Ministry reported that he treated about 25 people on the morning and afternoon of 25 November. Most had been shot in the upper area of the body, especially the face, with four people hit in the eyes with birdshot. (Report by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights)
Eyewitnesses say that police taunted protesters facing off against them, "If you want to lose your eye, come over here." A notorious video on Youtube shows a police officer firing on demonstrators in Mohamed Mahmoud Street. A soldier congratulates him, saying, "Nice shot, you hit that guy right in the eye." A blogger asked what kind of army, and what kind of society, would train its soldiers to think like that.
The authorities have not hesitated to kill – another video shows men in civilian clothing wielding long clubs apparently to finish off people left unconscious by police truncheons. But shooting people in the eyes seems to have become a deliberate policy meant to cause as much pain and terror as possible while avoiding greater numbers of politically problematic deaths. In addition, according to the same report, almost 400 people have been arrested and then beaten and otherwise abused in custody, including children.
Similarly, many of the fatalities have been attributed to tear gas. Questions have been raised about what exactly this tear gas contains, although examination of the spent cartridges found so far has not revealed anything that would make it more deadly than usual. Some medical experts speculate that the deaths are caused not by a more lethal variety of gas but its concentrated and sustained use over a long period. It may be that people are suffering from cumulative pulmonary, cardiac and other damage. So much gas has combined with the dust that usually coats this desert city that in much of the downtown the slightest gust of wind sets off coughing.
This gas is primarily supplied by the United States, as anyone can see by examining the markings on spent cartridges. The US provides the Egyptian military with 1.3 billion dollars a year in direct aid, amounting to two-thirds of total US funding for Egypt (money for civilian projects is no less harmful – US "aid" obliges Egyptians to depend on American wheat imports for their daily bread). US State Department records show that the US supplied 1.7 million dollars worth of "toxicological agents" – "including tear gas and riot control agents" in 2010 alone. (El Ahram Online, 25 November.)
Youth organizations have made public documents leaked to them by customs employees indicating that the US is now in the process of shipping the Egyptian Interior Ministry an additional 21 tons of tear gas. The second of three container ships was being unloaded in the port city of Suez when these documents were released on 28 November.
While the police are a civilian body, they are run by the Interior Ministry, which is under military control. The main police units attacking the protesters are from the Central Security Forces, responsible for most of the deaths in January and February. The members of this corps are recruited from among army conscripts who volunteer for the job. The armed forces claim that they have intervened to protect demonstrators from the police, but there have been many reports of army officers and military police accompanying other police in attacking Tahrir square and in defending the Interior Ministry, often surrounded by tanks. Now the military has put up a two-metre high wall of concrete slabs across Mohamed Mahmoud street.
The US has called for a "full transfer of power to a civilian government", a move that SCAF head Field Marshall Tantawi initially rejected. On 27 November he announced that no matter what the result of the elections, "the place of the army will remain exactly as it is. It will not change in any new constitution."
While Tahrir square is united around the chant, "The people want the fall of the field marshal", there is a prevailing lack of clarity about what kind of regime could be an alternative to military rule. SCAF has become as discredited as most of Egypt's political institutions, and there is not much hope for real change from the current elections. (We Are All Khaled Said, one of the main Facebook groups behind the original revolt, asked people to vote while wearing black badges in memory of the martyrs, a call that seems to reflect a mood of bleak acquiescence to the elections due to the lack of an alternative.) Yet few people envision a revolutionary overthrow of the entire state structure, including the armed forces. Instead, most would like to hope that somehow parliamentary elections or a constituent assembly – there is debate about which – could establish a rule of law that would somehow be above society. But the Egyptian ruling classes and the US imperialists they are beholden to would never respect any legal structure that didn't reflect their economic and political interests!
The viciousness of what the movement faces can be seen in the military tactics being used against them. These tactics are not only fully enabled by the US but also seem to be in line with Washington's political goals, which are to facilitate the emergence of a regime that would both continue to be subservient to US interests and enjoy enough legitimacy to get away with crushing the young rebels and their supporters. While there may be some conflict between SCAF and Washington, it is over how best to achieve this goal.
At the same time as SCAF was expressing its "regret" for deaths on its Facebook page, the American ambassador to Egypt used her Twitter account to announce that the US was donating 100,000 dollars in "humanitarian assistance for violence victims." In light of everything else the US has done in Egypt, including building up, sustaining and arming the Egyptian military, this is like gouging out someone's eyes and then offering them eye drops.
Donnerstag, 26. Mai 2011
Report from Tunisia : what happened, why and what more could happen
23 May 2011. A World to Win News Service. Following is the first instalment of a report written for AWTWNS by Samuel Albert. It describes what the revolt in Tunisia has achieved, and how. Subsequent instalments will analyse the underlying and triggering factors behind this revolt, and what the future may hold.
I. Great things
Great things have happened in Tunisia .
The greatest thing is that Tunisians, kept down first by the French and then by more than half a century of autocratic government subservient to France and other foreign capital, have awoken to political life in a way that happens only in special moments in history. They cast off passivity and routine's chains and sought to take the destiny of their country in their own hands. In fact, the masses of people were able to seize the political initiative countrywide – how often has that happened in today's world? – and impose changes that the Tunisian ruling classes and France and the US might or might not be able to accept but definitely did not want.
Zidane El Abidine Ben Ali ruled over Tunisia for 23 years. On 14 January 2011 he fell so unexpectedly and suddenly that the world was stunned, including Tunisians themselves. Since then they have brought down two successor governments and are challenging the third. The country remains in a rare state of effervescence.
Bourguiba boulevard in Tunis is a grand, French-style avenue with two rows of trees in the middle and cafés and expensive shops lining the sidewalks. Almost every evening since 14 January people of all walks of life gather to discuss and debate the issues of the day. The crowds are thickest on Friday and over the weekend. Knots of university students and older unemployed workers often listen to each other. Sometimes everyone shouts at once about this or that government proposal, about whether or not people should quiet down and go back to work and let the authorities take charge, or about Islam and the role of women in society. It's not unusual to see a woman loudly proclaiming her views to dozens of surrounding men. It seems to be a rule that everyone gets to speak.
Tongues have been untied. What a foreigner hears over and over again, from young and old, men and women, is this: "We've been kept silent all our lives. Now we are going to talk and nobody can make us shut up. We're going to be heard. Everybody's going to have to listen to us now."
People in the neglected smaller cities and dusty towns of the country's interior gather in squares and the cafés where men drink tea, smoke and argue from morning to night. They want to make sure that the country is still listening to them. There have been several violent social explosions over the past several months. Unemployed youth in at least two towns are on hunger strike, continuing to send the message that a young street peddler conveyed when he burned himself alive on 17 December and set off the revolt: they'd rather be dead than go on living this way.
Everywhere, one of the most contentious questions is whether or not there has been a real revolution. The current government says there has been, and that it is the revolution's representative. The armed forces says that there has been, and that it is the revolution's protector. In the streets and cafés, opinion is divided. An immense number of people are far from satisfied, especially the youth in general and the lower classes, and various parts of the middle classes, including the intelligentsia. What they have done so far has demonstrated their potential strength and made them hungry for more.
The question now is this: Will what the people have achieved so far make it possible to bring about the kind of radical change that could satisfy the aspirations expressed in their revolt? Or will the gains they have won through their self-sacrificing spirit be snatched away?
II. How it happened
Sidi Bouzid, where it all began
Sidi Bouzid is the town in the country's centre where the uprising began. It is the administrative capital of an arid governate (province) isolated from the world by wretched roads even though it is only a few hundred kilometres from the coast over flat land.
- A doctor (general practitioner):
Sidi Bouzid is last no matter what parameter you use to measure it. By law health care is supposed to be guaranteed for everyone, but there's only one small, badly equipped clinic in this town and other towns have none. I've never heard of a woman from the countryside coming in for a prenatal check-up. The public dispensaries have no medications – the supplies are sold illegally to private clinics.
There are no gynaecologist/obstetricians. Why would a specialist come to live in a province that has 413,000 inhabitants but not a single cinema? People are scattered in the countryside and small towns. There's no industry to concentrate people, no cultural life and it's hard to get to the big cities. Only 10 percent of the population is connected to the sewer system. There are 140,000 unemployed university graduates in this country of ten million, and ten percent of them, 1,400, are in this town of 45,000 people.
- A primary school teacher:
I was one of the first to pass by in front of the building after Mohammed Bouazizi set fire to himself, about 1 in the afternoon. A few men and women were demonstrating, mainly family members.
I called comrades and told them what happened and how it was the fault of the authorities. There are about 6,000 school teachers here. We're the biggest union, and we're also the intellectuals most closely in touch with the youth. Other activists came, including lawyers.
About 10:30 the next morning, lots of police came from Kasserine (the nearest city, towards the Algerian border). The battle began and continued for two days. About 8,000 gendarmes were brought in from all over the province. Ninety bus-loads of them, plus motorcycles (two-man teams, one to drive and the other to beat people). The whole town was throwing stones and fighting them – women, youth, elderly. We didn't burn and loot because it's our town, after all.
On the fifth day people came from other towns and villages to demonstrate. Other towns of 5-10,000 people erupted. It spread to Gabes on the coast, and then back to larger interior cities like Mederine. Then to Sfax, on 12 January, and the other big coastal cities. We didn't go to Tunis until after Ben Ali fled on 14 January...
- An older schoolteacher's union leader and political activist associated with the Patriotic and Democratic Labour Party (PT)
Most of the people in this region are small farmers. They tend livestock – especially sheep, and grow olives and other crops. Some land is irrigated, some not. There are no big landowners here. Families hire seasonal labourers during harvests, mostly women from neighbouring areas. There are some tomato canneries and an air conditioner plant, but not many factories. Aside from the top local government employees, living standards range from OK to pretty bad. Many farmers can't sell their crops in the coastal cities because there's no transport, and the buyers here rob them. The government programmes and other institutions like co-operatives are run by corrupt people with ties to the regime. Instead of helping the peasants they bleed them.
The poor peasants take out credit to buy a small truck or other equipment, and often can't pay back their loans. The interest is high. They end up going bankrupt and have to leave the country. When someone else buys up their land – and here there are few big capitalists and even fewer foreign investors – they irrigate it and grow crops for export like grapes, lettuce, peppers, cucumbers and melons. Because we're so far south, crops are ready for market early in the year, long before Europe and even northern Tunisia .
There isn't a single large store. There are lots of cafés because it doesn't take much capital to open one up and there's nothing to do but drink tea in a café. Some people buy and sell alcohol illegally.
Until now, hardly anybody was interested in politics, society or culture. Traditional holidays and folkloric events were organized by the regime for its own political purposes. Tribal relations are dying out because so many people are moving to big cities. In some places in this province 50-90 percent of the population have gone to look for work in Sfax, Monastir and Tunis , or immigrated illegally to Italy and France .
What we have here are lots of schools – 313 primary schools, 170 middle schools and several high schools. Education is compulsory and free. Among other reasons, peasants send their children to school because they don't have enough land to divide it up among their children. There's nothing else for kids to do but go to school. But the schools are in terrible condition and don't have much modern equipment.
The roads are so bad, especially the farm roads, that children who come to town for high school can't commute and have to find a place to live here. For university they go to the coastal cities. Many youth end up living with five or six other people in a garage. They drink wine, like most youth.
Isolated from their families and connected to the world by television and the Internet, craving a modern life style that unemployment and the lack of development won't let them have, they grow distant from their families and traditions. This is a patriarchal society, but they don't recognize their parents' authority. They won't even let their fathers find them a wife. That's a big generational rupture.
My son has two years of technical university. He's 29. I tell him, "I want you to have a wife and children like me." He says, "I can't, papa. That's too big a burden, too much responsibility." Some people are 40 years old and still haven't started their own family.
On top of all this is the fact that the youth weren't allowed to talk freely to each other and nobody would listen to them. Politics and political life was forbidden to them. Police were in the cafés to keep people from talking.
There were social explosions in 2006, 2008 and 2010 in the mining areas to the south and near the borders with Libya and Algeria . The government's solution was the police and this aggravated the situation. Some brave people, especially teachers, were sentenced to long prison terms. The economic situation got worse; peddlers selling contraband became numerous. The general mood among youth was very pessimistic and there were suicides.
Mohammed Bouazizi was typical of these youth. He wasn't a university graduate like the media said. He had a pushcart selling fruit and vegetables. He didn't have a permit, so a municipal agent confiscated his scale. Without a scale, he couldn't make a living. He complained to the authorities, but nobody would listen to him. A woman municipal agent slapped him in the face.
I wasn't there when he set fire to himself in front of the administration building on 17 December. His family staged a protest, and spread the word to other towns through tribal relationships. On the 18th and 19th we organized demonstrations. There were teachers and government employees, and soon most of the townspeople were in the streets. Our slogans held the regime responsible for Bouazizi's death. The police encircled the whole city. We met in the offices of the UGTT (the union federation). The police wouldn't let us out of there to demonstrate in the streets.
So the youth started protesting in their neighbourhoods. They fought with the police, especially at night when police cameras couldn't take pictures.
Our first slogans were "Work is a right" and "Gang of thieves – where is our right to work?" Then the central government sent in the gendarmes. We chanted slogans for freedom of expression and demonstrations and equality of development.
The media didn't mention any of this. There was a total blackout for the first few days, even as the protests spread to nearby cities. Many towns were blockaded by the police and gendarmes. We made videos with our mobiles (cellphones) and posted them online.
"Let us tell you how we made the revolution"
- University student, Tunis (with half a dozen other students chiming in)
I'm a member of the Communist Party of Tunisian Workers (PCOT). I've been a student activist since 2000, when we were arrested for holding a demonstration at school. We were always getting clubbed by the police. When Bouazizi burned himself, students and high school teachers' union members from Tunis went to Sidi Bouzid. The regime was trying to calm people down. Ben Ali gave Bouazizi's mother money. We paralysed the city and used our mobiles to spread the news. Many comrades were shot in the head while fighting the police. Some of us stayed there; others came back to Tunis to work Facebook and show people what was happening in Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine.
The demonstrations started to reach Tunis on 28 December (when artists and professionals, especially lawyers, protested), but not in a big way until 11 January, when there was a major protest in a suburb near the capital. The next day there was a demonstration in Beb El Khader, about a kilometre from the city centre. A youth was killed in another demo there the next day. Seven of us comrades went there. On the 14th we carried his body all the way through the city and down Bourguiba boulevard , calling on the people to revolt. People on the street were very respectful of us. We attacked the police. We didn't want to have just another demonstration and then everyone go home. We were tired of seeing youth get beaten.
- A third year student:
For a long time I felt like I was just about the only one who thought like me. We started using Youtube and Facebook because it was the only way we could talk freely. Then two bloggers were arrested in mid-2010, and everyone got scared.
When friends called and told us what was happening in Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine, and the media wasn't saying anything about it, we got mad. We had to express ourselves. About a hundred of us used Facebook to organize the first demonstration in central Tunis . On 13 January the police arrested me and other bloggers and held me for about three hours. I'd been clubbed before, but never arrested. They asked why we were demonstrating; I said because of injustice.
When they let me go I went home to the working class neighbourhood where I live. On the Net I saw that other bloggers had been busted. We told everyone to come out into the streets the next day. That night Ben Ali gave a big speech saying that he wouldn't step down. Some guys – nobody knows who they were – were driving around in cars without license plates and shooting people at random. I was scared to go out. A curfew was in force, but a few people were allowed to come to Bourguiba boulevard to applaud the president. We heard that France and the EU were going to send Ben Ali help. I thought that was going to be the end of it.
The next morning, at 8:30, I was on the boulevard. There were three or four thousand people in front of the Municipal Theatre. Everyone carried Tunisian flags and protest signs. For once, it wasn't raining. By 10 or 11 the boulevard was full; there wasn't room for one more person. I didn't think the police could attack, because there were so many of us and the international press was watching. Nothing was happening, and then suddenly tear gas grenades were fired. People in the first ranks in front of the Interior Ministry began trying to back up. I thought that would be it for the day and we'd come back tomorrow. It was an unforgettable moment – people were crying as they sang the national anthem. The old people, children and some women retreated. The rest of us started fighting. We fought all day.
- Union members and leaders, UGTT regional headquarters in the Tunisian industrial suburb of Ben Arous:
This town has half a million people. It has chemical plants, an oil refinery and many factories like electronic parts sub-assembly plants for foreign car companies and food processing. It's considered attractive for foreign investment because of its educated and skilled workers and technicians and good infrastructure. Most of the workers here are originally from this region.
We were never a "normal" union . The UGTT was founded during the liberation struggle in the 1930s. We were doing political work for years, especially in the mining region of the south. The national union leadership supported Ben Ali, but the regional and local leadership were against that. Because political parties were outlawed, the leftist parties worked mainly through the unions, as well as human rights organizations and NGOs.
It's true, like people say, that the revolution was made for liberty , not bread, but it's also true that while we were suffocated by the Ben Ali mafia, people in the interior were suffering from extreme regional inequalities and unemployment.
We had our first rally here on 5 January, mainly union members and other workers. The police surrounded our offices. After that we held a mass meeting to decide what to do, and called for a regional general strike on 14 January from 10 am to noon.
Ben Ali closed the schools because of the unrest. The students came to meet in our offices because they had nowhere else to meet – the official student union was run by the regime. It turned out that there were no strikes because many factories didn't even open that morning. Everything just stopped. So students and other people went to demonstrate in central Tunis . That evening Ben Ali resigned.
I. Great things
Great things have happened in Tunisia .
The greatest thing is that Tunisians, kept down first by the French and then by more than half a century of autocratic government subservient to France and other foreign capital, have awoken to political life in a way that happens only in special moments in history. They cast off passivity and routine's chains and sought to take the destiny of their country in their own hands. In fact, the masses of people were able to seize the political initiative countrywide – how often has that happened in today's world? – and impose changes that the Tunisian ruling classes and France and the US might or might not be able to accept but definitely did not want.
Zidane El Abidine Ben Ali ruled over Tunisia for 23 years. On 14 January 2011 he fell so unexpectedly and suddenly that the world was stunned, including Tunisians themselves. Since then they have brought down two successor governments and are challenging the third. The country remains in a rare state of effervescence.
Bourguiba boulevard in Tunis is a grand, French-style avenue with two rows of trees in the middle and cafés and expensive shops lining the sidewalks. Almost every evening since 14 January people of all walks of life gather to discuss and debate the issues of the day. The crowds are thickest on Friday and over the weekend. Knots of university students and older unemployed workers often listen to each other. Sometimes everyone shouts at once about this or that government proposal, about whether or not people should quiet down and go back to work and let the authorities take charge, or about Islam and the role of women in society. It's not unusual to see a woman loudly proclaiming her views to dozens of surrounding men. It seems to be a rule that everyone gets to speak.
Tongues have been untied. What a foreigner hears over and over again, from young and old, men and women, is this: "We've been kept silent all our lives. Now we are going to talk and nobody can make us shut up. We're going to be heard. Everybody's going to have to listen to us now."
People in the neglected smaller cities and dusty towns of the country's interior gather in squares and the cafés where men drink tea, smoke and argue from morning to night. They want to make sure that the country is still listening to them. There have been several violent social explosions over the past several months. Unemployed youth in at least two towns are on hunger strike, continuing to send the message that a young street peddler conveyed when he burned himself alive on 17 December and set off the revolt: they'd rather be dead than go on living this way.
Everywhere, one of the most contentious questions is whether or not there has been a real revolution. The current government says there has been, and that it is the revolution's representative. The armed forces says that there has been, and that it is the revolution's protector. In the streets and cafés, opinion is divided. An immense number of people are far from satisfied, especially the youth in general and the lower classes, and various parts of the middle classes, including the intelligentsia. What they have done so far has demonstrated their potential strength and made them hungry for more.
The question now is this: Will what the people have achieved so far make it possible to bring about the kind of radical change that could satisfy the aspirations expressed in their revolt? Or will the gains they have won through their self-sacrificing spirit be snatched away?
II. How it happened
Sidi Bouzid, where it all began
Sidi Bouzid is the town in the country's centre where the uprising began. It is the administrative capital of an arid governate (province) isolated from the world by wretched roads even though it is only a few hundred kilometres from the coast over flat land.
- A doctor (general practitioner):
Sidi Bouzid is last no matter what parameter you use to measure it. By law health care is supposed to be guaranteed for everyone, but there's only one small, badly equipped clinic in this town and other towns have none. I've never heard of a woman from the countryside coming in for a prenatal check-up. The public dispensaries have no medications – the supplies are sold illegally to private clinics.
There are no gynaecologist/obstetricians. Why would a specialist come to live in a province that has 413,000 inhabitants but not a single cinema? People are scattered in the countryside and small towns. There's no industry to concentrate people, no cultural life and it's hard to get to the big cities. Only 10 percent of the population is connected to the sewer system. There are 140,000 unemployed university graduates in this country of ten million, and ten percent of them, 1,400, are in this town of 45,000 people.
- A primary school teacher:
I was one of the first to pass by in front of the building after Mohammed Bouazizi set fire to himself, about 1 in the afternoon. A few men and women were demonstrating, mainly family members.
I called comrades and told them what happened and how it was the fault of the authorities. There are about 6,000 school teachers here. We're the biggest union, and we're also the intellectuals most closely in touch with the youth. Other activists came, including lawyers.
About 10:30 the next morning, lots of police came from Kasserine (the nearest city, towards the Algerian border). The battle began and continued for two days. About 8,000 gendarmes were brought in from all over the province. Ninety bus-loads of them, plus motorcycles (two-man teams, one to drive and the other to beat people). The whole town was throwing stones and fighting them – women, youth, elderly. We didn't burn and loot because it's our town, after all.
On the fifth day people came from other towns and villages to demonstrate. Other towns of 5-10,000 people erupted. It spread to Gabes on the coast, and then back to larger interior cities like Mederine. Then to Sfax, on 12 January, and the other big coastal cities. We didn't go to Tunis until after Ben Ali fled on 14 January...
- An older schoolteacher's union leader and political activist associated with the Patriotic and Democratic Labour Party (PT)
Most of the people in this region are small farmers. They tend livestock – especially sheep, and grow olives and other crops. Some land is irrigated, some not. There are no big landowners here. Families hire seasonal labourers during harvests, mostly women from neighbouring areas. There are some tomato canneries and an air conditioner plant, but not many factories. Aside from the top local government employees, living standards range from OK to pretty bad. Many farmers can't sell their crops in the coastal cities because there's no transport, and the buyers here rob them. The government programmes and other institutions like co-operatives are run by corrupt people with ties to the regime. Instead of helping the peasants they bleed them.
The poor peasants take out credit to buy a small truck or other equipment, and often can't pay back their loans. The interest is high. They end up going bankrupt and have to leave the country. When someone else buys up their land – and here there are few big capitalists and even fewer foreign investors – they irrigate it and grow crops for export like grapes, lettuce, peppers, cucumbers and melons. Because we're so far south, crops are ready for market early in the year, long before Europe and even northern Tunisia .
There isn't a single large store. There are lots of cafés because it doesn't take much capital to open one up and there's nothing to do but drink tea in a café. Some people buy and sell alcohol illegally.
Until now, hardly anybody was interested in politics, society or culture. Traditional holidays and folkloric events were organized by the regime for its own political purposes. Tribal relations are dying out because so many people are moving to big cities. In some places in this province 50-90 percent of the population have gone to look for work in Sfax, Monastir and Tunis , or immigrated illegally to Italy and France .
What we have here are lots of schools – 313 primary schools, 170 middle schools and several high schools. Education is compulsory and free. Among other reasons, peasants send their children to school because they don't have enough land to divide it up among their children. There's nothing else for kids to do but go to school. But the schools are in terrible condition and don't have much modern equipment.
The roads are so bad, especially the farm roads, that children who come to town for high school can't commute and have to find a place to live here. For university they go to the coastal cities. Many youth end up living with five or six other people in a garage. They drink wine, like most youth.
Isolated from their families and connected to the world by television and the Internet, craving a modern life style that unemployment and the lack of development won't let them have, they grow distant from their families and traditions. This is a patriarchal society, but they don't recognize their parents' authority. They won't even let their fathers find them a wife. That's a big generational rupture.
My son has two years of technical university. He's 29. I tell him, "I want you to have a wife and children like me." He says, "I can't, papa. That's too big a burden, too much responsibility." Some people are 40 years old and still haven't started their own family.
On top of all this is the fact that the youth weren't allowed to talk freely to each other and nobody would listen to them. Politics and political life was forbidden to them. Police were in the cafés to keep people from talking.
There were social explosions in 2006, 2008 and 2010 in the mining areas to the south and near the borders with Libya and Algeria . The government's solution was the police and this aggravated the situation. Some brave people, especially teachers, were sentenced to long prison terms. The economic situation got worse; peddlers selling contraband became numerous. The general mood among youth was very pessimistic and there were suicides.
Mohammed Bouazizi was typical of these youth. He wasn't a university graduate like the media said. He had a pushcart selling fruit and vegetables. He didn't have a permit, so a municipal agent confiscated his scale. Without a scale, he couldn't make a living. He complained to the authorities, but nobody would listen to him. A woman municipal agent slapped him in the face.
I wasn't there when he set fire to himself in front of the administration building on 17 December. His family staged a protest, and spread the word to other towns through tribal relationships. On the 18th and 19th we organized demonstrations. There were teachers and government employees, and soon most of the townspeople were in the streets. Our slogans held the regime responsible for Bouazizi's death. The police encircled the whole city. We met in the offices of the UGTT (the union federation). The police wouldn't let us out of there to demonstrate in the streets.
So the youth started protesting in their neighbourhoods. They fought with the police, especially at night when police cameras couldn't take pictures.
Our first slogans were "Work is a right" and "Gang of thieves – where is our right to work?" Then the central government sent in the gendarmes. We chanted slogans for freedom of expression and demonstrations and equality of development.
The media didn't mention any of this. There was a total blackout for the first few days, even as the protests spread to nearby cities. Many towns were blockaded by the police and gendarmes. We made videos with our mobiles (cellphones) and posted them online.
"Let us tell you how we made the revolution"
- University student, Tunis (with half a dozen other students chiming in)
I'm a member of the Communist Party of Tunisian Workers (PCOT). I've been a student activist since 2000, when we were arrested for holding a demonstration at school. We were always getting clubbed by the police. When Bouazizi burned himself, students and high school teachers' union members from Tunis went to Sidi Bouzid. The regime was trying to calm people down. Ben Ali gave Bouazizi's mother money. We paralysed the city and used our mobiles to spread the news. Many comrades were shot in the head while fighting the police. Some of us stayed there; others came back to Tunis to work Facebook and show people what was happening in Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine.
The demonstrations started to reach Tunis on 28 December (when artists and professionals, especially lawyers, protested), but not in a big way until 11 January, when there was a major protest in a suburb near the capital. The next day there was a demonstration in Beb El Khader, about a kilometre from the city centre. A youth was killed in another demo there the next day. Seven of us comrades went there. On the 14th we carried his body all the way through the city and down Bourguiba boulevard , calling on the people to revolt. People on the street were very respectful of us. We attacked the police. We didn't want to have just another demonstration and then everyone go home. We were tired of seeing youth get beaten.
- A third year student:
For a long time I felt like I was just about the only one who thought like me. We started using Youtube and Facebook because it was the only way we could talk freely. Then two bloggers were arrested in mid-2010, and everyone got scared.
When friends called and told us what was happening in Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine, and the media wasn't saying anything about it, we got mad. We had to express ourselves. About a hundred of us used Facebook to organize the first demonstration in central Tunis . On 13 January the police arrested me and other bloggers and held me for about three hours. I'd been clubbed before, but never arrested. They asked why we were demonstrating; I said because of injustice.
When they let me go I went home to the working class neighbourhood where I live. On the Net I saw that other bloggers had been busted. We told everyone to come out into the streets the next day. That night Ben Ali gave a big speech saying that he wouldn't step down. Some guys – nobody knows who they were – were driving around in cars without license plates and shooting people at random. I was scared to go out. A curfew was in force, but a few people were allowed to come to Bourguiba boulevard to applaud the president. We heard that France and the EU were going to send Ben Ali help. I thought that was going to be the end of it.
The next morning, at 8:30, I was on the boulevard. There were three or four thousand people in front of the Municipal Theatre. Everyone carried Tunisian flags and protest signs. For once, it wasn't raining. By 10 or 11 the boulevard was full; there wasn't room for one more person. I didn't think the police could attack, because there were so many of us and the international press was watching. Nothing was happening, and then suddenly tear gas grenades were fired. People in the first ranks in front of the Interior Ministry began trying to back up. I thought that would be it for the day and we'd come back tomorrow. It was an unforgettable moment – people were crying as they sang the national anthem. The old people, children and some women retreated. The rest of us started fighting. We fought all day.
- Union members and leaders, UGTT regional headquarters in the Tunisian industrial suburb of Ben Arous:
This town has half a million people. It has chemical plants, an oil refinery and many factories like electronic parts sub-assembly plants for foreign car companies and food processing. It's considered attractive for foreign investment because of its educated and skilled workers and technicians and good infrastructure. Most of the workers here are originally from this region.
We were never a "normal" union . The UGTT was founded during the liberation struggle in the 1930s. We were doing political work for years, especially in the mining region of the south. The national union leadership supported Ben Ali, but the regional and local leadership were against that. Because political parties were outlawed, the leftist parties worked mainly through the unions, as well as human rights organizations and NGOs.
It's true, like people say, that the revolution was made for liberty , not bread, but it's also true that while we were suffocated by the Ben Ali mafia, people in the interior were suffering from extreme regional inequalities and unemployment.
We had our first rally here on 5 January, mainly union members and other workers. The police surrounded our offices. After that we held a mass meeting to decide what to do, and called for a regional general strike on 14 January from 10 am to noon.
Ben Ali closed the schools because of the unrest. The students came to meet in our offices because they had nowhere else to meet – the official student union was run by the regime. It turned out that there were no strikes because many factories didn't even open that morning. Everything just stopped. So students and other people went to demonstrate in central Tunis . That evening Ben Ali resigned.
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