McGill TribuneWhen Mohamed Bouazizi soaked himself in paint thinner and set himself on fire on December 17, 2010, it wasn’t just his body that erupted. It was an entire country.
Bouazizi was a Tunisian who dropped out of high school in order to support his family of eight. He worked on a small farm owned by his uncle until the government unjustly seized it. Desperate and unemployed, he resorted to selling fruits and vegetables on the streets, until the police confiscated his cart and literally slapped him across the face.
Helpless, he marched to the regional government headquarters to plead his case and redeem his rights. No one listened. In fact, government officials kicked him out of the building, essentially spitting on whatever dignity he had left.
Filled with despair, the 26-year-old burned himself alive in front of the same government that bulldozed over his right to live with honour and dignity. Shockwaves of protests immediately reverberated throughout the country. Tunisians poured into the streets and fearlessly marched into clouds of tear gas.
Authoritarian regimes are able to survive so long as their citizens are perpetually terrified to die. This is why corrupt governments keep their people in an endless circle of anxiety, to ensure uncritical compliance, conformity, and obedience by all citizens at all times.
However, these myopic tyrants don’t realize that constant stimulation leads to desensitization. Eventually, citizens learn not to fear death any more precisely because their governments cheapened the currency of life. All it takes for the tables to turn is for someone like Bouazizi to epitomize this reality.
All of a sudden, it was the ruthless Tunisian president who was made to choose between fight-or-flight. Being the brave man that he was, he naturally opted for the latter.
Meanwhile, dictators in neighbouring countries have started taking measures to ensure that their own citizens do not get any ideas from Tunisia’s experience. But they already have.
Egyptians, who arguably produce the largest number of anti-government jokes per capita, are beyond fed up. President Hosni Mubarak has kept Egypt in a state of emergency since 1981—the entire duration of his rule. In other words, for over 29 years (and counting), the Egyptian government has had the power to imprison individuals for any period of time, and for virtually no reason, without trial or due process.
This is part of the reason why several Bouazizi-inspired Egyptian citizens—including a lawyer—set themselves on fire over the past week, hoping for change.
However, the Egyptians must realize that President Ben Ali did not flee Tunisia after 23 years of merciless rule because of one self-immolation event, or even five. He fled because a critical mass of Tunisians realized that rampant poverty, corruption, censorship, unemployment, and soaring food prices are not a detour away from death; they are a superhighway that leads directly to it.
Given that Tunisia is now politically shattered and in need of direction, Western governments will be tempted to make an aggressive sales pitch for democracy. There is nothing wrong with extolling the virtues of elected government. However, there is everything wrong with insisting that democracy is only legitimate if it’s imported from the West.
We have seen what happened when George W. Bush’s political surgeons insisted they could successfully transplant American-style democracy into Iraq, even though Iraq’s drastically different cultural, religious and economic climate suggested this was a bad move. Now, almost eight years later, Iraq remains in a coma.
We have a moral obligation to empower those around the world who continue to struggle and bleed and burn for the sake of claiming what rightfully belongs to them. And when they do, let us celebrate their victory and help them rebuild a country that best serves their interests, not ours.
