ered by the self- immolation of an overeducated 26-year-old Tunisian vegetable seller whose cart was repeatedly confiscated by the authorities. After Mohamed Bouazizi was slapped by a policewoman when he tried to complain, he reached the end of his tether. Bouazizi’s public suicide turned into a social movement bec

a sizeable advantage. This is not naïve or farfetched. After all, it was the plight of Tunisian vendor HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_031929 --- PAGE BREAK --- 18 Mohamed Bouazizi and the symbolism of his fate that sparked all the revolutions across the Middle East. The images of the rebels in Libya liberating their country (as

and poor living conditions. Labor unions were said to be an integral part of the protests. But the catalyst for mass demonstrations was the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor, who set himself afire on 17 December 2010 in protest at the confiscation of his wares and the humiliation in

he entire Middle East. "We have far more freedoms," one peddler hawking fruit in the same square lamented, "but far fewer jobs." Another noted that Mohamed Bouazizi, the vendor who set himself on fire, did so not to vote in a democratic election but because harassment by local officials had cost him his livelih

ountries, more were university graduates with higher expectations. Their frustration and anger became unbearable. The desperate act of one of them, Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire in front of a police station in a sad town in Tunisia's interior, became the symbol and catalyzing spark for the whole gen

burg rulers, led to the division between Belgium and Holland. In the case of the Arab awakening of 2011, 46-year-old policewoman Fedia Hamdi struck Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian stallholder in a market, and in protest he burned himself alive (in the subsequent investigation it appeared that in fact Hamdi had not