A year after his death, Tunisia honors man who sparked a revolution

 

People walk past a statue depicting Tunisian produce seller Mohamed Bouazizi's cart, who set himself on fire last December in an act of protest that triggered the Arab Spring revolution. (Zoubeir Souissi/Reuters)

msnbc.com/  By BOUAZZA BEN BOUAZZA, PAUL SCHEMM/

TUNIS, Tunisia — Exactly one year ago, in a hardscrabble town in Tunisia's arid interior, the death knell sounded for the decades-old system of dictatorships across the Arab world.

With a desperate act of self-immolation, a 26-year-old Sidi Bouzid fruit-seller unwittingly unleashed a year of turmoil that toppled at least three autocrats in a region once thought to be immune to democracy.

Tunisia's new leaders together with thousands of others took part in a festival starting Saturday in the town honoring the vendor, the revolution, and the protesters whose anger snowballed into a nationwide and then region-wide phenomenon.

The changes in the Arab world over the past 12 months cannot be overstated. A region synonymous with stagnant authoritarian republics and monarchies is suddenly rife with change — for better or worse.

The biggest winners so far appear to be the long-repressed Islamist parties, which didn't always lead the revolts but in subsequent elections in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco were the best organized and least tainted by the old regimes.

Tunisia's transformation As the country that started the Arab Spring, Tunisia appears to be the farthest along in its transformation, having held its freest elections ever that brought to power a moderate Islamist party that most had thought had been oppressed out of existence.

Previously, Tunisia under former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was renowned among European tourists for its sandy beaches and cosmopolitan ways. But for most of its people, Ben Ali's presidency was 23 years of suffocating iron-fisted rule.

Now a human rights activist is president, and an Islamist politician who was jailed by Ben Ali for 15 years is the prime minister at the head of a coalition of left, liberal and religious parties. More >>