Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Bouazizi’s fire is still lit : It still scares them

Today marks the anniversary of that action Tunisian street vendor called Mohamed BouAzizi decided to take to object the ill-treatment of policemen to him in his town Sidi Bou Zid in Tunisia.
He decided to burn himself alive to object how he was slapped by a policewoman earlier in the market who decided to confiscate his goods.
Mohamed Bouazizi


His action and then his death days unleashed an unprecedented wave of events that have been taking the Arab world as well as the world by storm.
It is like when you said “The rest is history”.

That street vendor who suffered from unemployment did not know that his decision what the world would Call  Arab Spring.

The current secretary of Arab League and Mubarak’s foreigner minister Ahmed Abu El-Ghait has been slammed the Arab Spring claiming that the events of 2011 were the ones that led foreign countries like Turkey and Iran to interfere in the Arab countries despite he believes in the importance of change.

In other interviews and statements, he accuses it of spreading chaos to the end of that talk.
Ahmed Abu El-Ghait came from that regime or those regimes the Arab youth once protested against so I am not surprised with what he said.

Naming Arab Spring, Arab autumn or Arab fury or Arab chaos does not matter. It is still there.
Those Western-style names do not matter to us as Arabs or Egyptians or Middle Easterners.

Nine years later the Bouazizis are still there frustrated

Just as nine years passed over Bou Azizi’s self-immolation, the Arab youth are still protesting for their fundamental rights. 

On Thursday, the Sudanese protesters will celebrate the first anniversary of the start of their revolution that liberated them from Al-Bashir rule after 30 years of his bloody corrupted iron fist.
The start was in the city of Attbara when thousands of high school students began to protest against their breakfast meal prices.



They were joined by the rest of the people in the industrial city who object to the increase of bread prices not to mention the shortage of bread in the first place.

Then it became a huge movement of protests, of civilian peaceful protests against a corrupted decayed military regime that committed internationally recognized war crimes.
In the end, the head of that regime Omar El-Bashir was ousted by the Sudanese military.
The military in the Arab world always gets rid of the weakest link when it is met by huge public anger as well as regional and international support. 
Yes, they still have to go on a long path and to learn from others’ mistakes especially our mistakes in the North.
Yes, Omar El-Bashir has not got what he really deserves.
He only got two years in a correctional facility for the elderly for a charge he used to execute people for aka corruption and currency irregularities.
FYI, the Sudanese prosecution said that he and his team are working to charge El-Bashir with crimes from 1989 to 2019.
Yes, they still got a war criminal backed up by Gulf rulers in power who turn against democracy at any moment.
But still, who can have imagined? I do not think that anyone could have imagined all that to happen in Sudan on 11 December 2018.

On Tuesday the Algerians continue to protest against their army generals and the newly elected president who is part of that regime that they are revolting against.

The Lebanese protesters are still protesting day night against their sectarian regime, economically and politically corrupted leaders as well as even more corrupted banks.

Iraqi protesters are still holding their ground in their sti-in at Baghdad's Tahrir square when their famous activists and protesters are being abducted and killed every couple of days.

From couple of months ago, economic conditions and a streetwise businessman turned in to a whistleblower in self-exile reminded the world that the story is unfinished in Egypt.

The story is not over.

The cause of the fire of Bouazizi is still there


Those uprisings are still going on in a way or another because simply the reasons that led to those uprisings are still there in this part world during that scary revival of the alt-right wing in the West.

The mentality of the policewoman who slapped frustrated Bou Azizi is still ruling the majority of the Arab world.
The regimes believe after what happened in 2013 in Egypt that this tidal wave was over but they were wrong.

The alt-right wing West is afraid of a new protest movement in the Middle East because they believe we are animals who deserve to be ruled by iron-fist otherwise if those strongmen holding the cages fall, those animals will jump into the next boat and will head to Europe to take their jobs and spread their Islamic Sharia.

Ironically those Europeans do not understand that actually those strongmen and depots are one of the main reasons.
The Algerian and Egyptian teens would not have crossed the Mediterranean risking their life if there is true social justice, youth empowerment and even less corruption in their countries.

In my field, I see that great generation of journalists that blossomed following the 25 January revolution in 2011 when the Egyptian press celebrated unprecedented freedom of the press for the first time since 1952.
Many of my colleagues have left the country to pursue work abroad in journalism with more freedom.
Some of my colleagues made a career shift because they could not take it anymore.
This is just a tiny example.

Let’s go to the greatest example of all: The Syrian refugees.
The Syrian refugees would not have left their homes and risked the life of their children across the seas if it were not for Bashar El-Assad and his allies from Russia and Iran more than anything, before ISIS.
Needless to say, Russia and El-Assad are best buddies with the alt-right worldwide.

We are not animals and even animals fight for their freedom and living in their natural home in the wild freely. We are not less third world people who do not understand or deserve to live in a democracy that respects fundamental and universal human rights.

Anyhow, I am sorry for my long rant. I have not been blogging as before because I feel disappointed and depressed with all that is going yet in this post I am trying to break the ice.

Please pray for Mohamed Bouaziz

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