http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/world/africa/15tunis.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
Tunisia
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
The fall of Mr. Ben Ali marked the first time that widespread street demonstrations had overthrown an Arab leader. And even before the last clouds of tear gas had drifted away from the capital’s cafe-lined
“What happened here is going to affect the whole Arab world,” said Zied Mhirsi, a 33-year-old doctor protesting outside the Interior Ministry on Friday. He carried a sign highlighting how he believed
Because the protests came together largely through informal online networks, their success has also raised questions about whether a new opposition movement has formed that could challenge whatever new government takes shape. Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, a close ally from the president’s hometown, announced on state television that he was taking power as interim president. But that step violated the Tunisian Constitution, which provides for a succession by the head of Parliament, something that Mr. Ghannouchi tried to gloss over by describing Mr. Ben Ali as “temporarily” unable to serve.
Yet by late Friday night, Tunisian Facebook pages previously emblazoned with the revolt’s slogan, “Ben Ali, Out,” had made way for the name of the interim president. “Ghannouchi Out,” they declared.
News of the president’s departure followed, by just hours, the biggest battle yet between the protesters and security forces. Emboldened by a last-minute pledge from Mr. Ben Ali to stop shooting demonstrators, as many as 10,000 people poured into the streets. But when they paraded the body of a person said to have been shot elsewhere in the city, the waiting rows of police officers stormed the crowd, filling the streets with a thick cloud of tear gas and hammering fleeing demonstrators with clubs.
In a final bid to placate the protesters, Mr. Ben Ali had already pledged to hold parliamentary elections in six months. Those elections are now expected to include a presidential contest as well. But fair and open elections would be a first for
On Friday night the capital remained under a tight curfew. Groups of more than two people were forbidden on the streets after 5 p.m., and no one was allowed out after 8 p.m. State news media warned that the police would shoot curfew violators on sight. Tanks and other security forces were deployed around the city, and the airport was shut down.
As night fell, gangs of security forces armed with machine guns and clubs could be seen chasing down stragglers. Dozens have died in clashes with the police over the last week, and continued gunshots were reported well after curfew on Friday night from several neighborhoods around the capital as sporadic riots continued.
The
“The
The antigovernment protests began a month ago when a college-educated street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi in the small town of
The protesters, led at first by unemployed college graduates like Mr. Bouazizi and later joined by workers and young professionals, found grist for the complaints in leaked cables from the United States Embassy in Tunisia, released by WikiLeaks, that detailed the self-dealing and excess of the president’s family. And the protesters relied heavily on social media Web sites like Facebook and Twitter to circulate videos of each demonstration and issue calls for the next one.
By midday Friday, hours before news of the president’s departure, demonstrators had gathered outside the Interior Ministry and were already celebrating their anticipated victory and debating its significance.
“Thank you, Al Jazeera,” read one sign, commending the Arab news channel for its nightly coverage of the unrest in the past month — long before the Western news media took serious notice. Many here credit Al Jazeera’s broadcasts with forging the sense of solidarity and empowerment that moved Tunisians across the country to take to the streets simultaneously.
The other side of that sign read “#sidibouzid,” a reference to a Twitter feed, named for the town where the self-immolation took place, that demonstrators used as a forum for their anger and their plans. After news of the president’s departure on Friday, other Twitter posts echoed the theme. “Every Arab leader is watching
Others in the crowd, however, were eager to emphasize the education and relative affluence that they said distinguished them from other people in the region. “Please don’t say we are the same as
“We are the Bourguiba generation,” she said, referring to
In his last days Mr. Ben Ali cycled through a series of attempts to placate the protesters, firing his interior minister, pledging a corruption investigation, promising new freedoms and a resignation at the end of his term in 2014, and finally dismissing his whole cabinet.
But his promises did no more than the bullets or tear gas to dissuade the protesters from taking to the streets. After hearing Mr. Ben Ali promise in a televised address on Thursday night to stop shooting demonstrators, crowds began to gather outside the Interior Ministry along
For the first time in the month of protests, large numbers of young women joined the crowd, almost none wearing any form of Islamic veil.
Many, accustomed to living under one of the region’s most repressive governments, were both excited and uneasy about their new sense of freedom. “We are too many now, we are too big, it is more difficult to silence us,” one woman said, grinning. “But for us it is new to talk. We are still a little bit scared,” she added, declining to give her name.
As throughout the uprising, they aimed much of their ire at the president’s second wife, the former Leila Trabelsi, a hairdresser from a humble family whose relatives have amassed conspicuous fortunes since her 1992 marriage. “Policeman, open your eyes, the hairdresser is ruling you,” they chanted, addressing Mr. Ben Ali.
“We are suffering from what the Trabelsis stole,” said one protester, a young executive who declined to give his name for fear of reprisals. “Every major sector in
Elizabeth Heron contributed reporting from New York, Steven Erlanger from Paris, and Mona El-Naggar from
© 2011 The New York Times Company
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"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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