The Genesis of Jasmine Revolution

Wedded in the history of millennia, Tunisia traces her earliest recorded history to
Carthage, (ruin of Carthage is now declared as a World Heritage Site) a 9th century BC city,
built by the Greek settlers at the eastern side of Lake Tunis. Tunisia was under the Roman
rule, till the Roman Empire was crippled and overtaken by the fury of Islam in 8th century
AD. The Ottoman Empire was ruling Tunisia till 1869 when it was invaded by the French.
Habib Bourguiba led the country to freedom from the French occupation in 1956 and since
then he was ruling the country till November 1987 when doctors declared him unfit to rule.
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali picked up the throne from Bourguiba in a bloodless coup in 1987
and ruling through numerous successful re-elections till Mohamed Bouazizi, an obscure
Muslim man and sole bread earner of a family of eight was harassed by the notorious
Tunisian police.

Mohamed Bouazizi of Sidi Bouzid, a place 300 km south of Tunis, was an unlicensed
vegetable vendor whose cart was confiscated by the police on December 17, 2010. Bouazizi
tried to pay the usual 10-dinar (7USD) bribe to the policewoman but in return he received
harassment and humiliation. When the matter remained unresolved at the police station,
Bouazizi rushed to the provincial headquarter of the municipality, the licensing authority of
vegetable carts in the city. Worse, he denied an audience there. Helpless with the unbearable
pain of feeding his family waiting back home, Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of the
municipal office. Public unrest grew and in an attempt to smoothen the public ire, on
December 28, 2010 President Ben Ali paid a visit to Bouazizi at the hospital where he died a
week later on January 4, 2011.

The condition of Tunisian society which has been witnessing unemployment, food
inflation, corruption, lack of freedom of speech and poor living conditions for some time was
ripe for a revolution. Bouazizi’s death set the stage on fire. People responded through civil
resistance and a series of street demonstration. The protests constituted the most dramatic
wave of social and political unrest in Tunisia in three decades and have resulted in scores of
deaths and injuries. The protest continued for 28 days when President Ben Ali was forced to
resign and flee Saudi Arabia on January 14, 2011, ending his 23 years of dictatorship.

Taking cue from the place where the protest started, the protestors named the
revolution as Sidi Bouzid Revolt. However media dubbed the revolt, which spread
horizontally across Tunisia, as Jasmine Revolution named after the national flower of
Tunisia. Quickly, Egypt outperformed Tunisia in ousting its three decade old dictator Husni
Mubarakh. Tahrir Square of central Cairo became the new address of Jasmine Revolution,
which since then spreading like epidemic.

Post Cairo, Chinese citizens expressed their displeasure at the country’s lack of
reforms and officials’ corruption. A small but stubborn group of people silently started
meeting in front of department stores or other public areas for a ‘Jasmine Revolution,’ a
named borrowed from the Tunisian revolt that set off the Middle East unrest. Chinese
government blocked the word Jasmine from internet communication and blocked any discreet
meeting and hence suppressed revolution, if any, before its emergence.

Saroj Kumar Rath

saroj1saroj@gmail.com
Hosei University, Tokyo