Tunisia: a year of all dangers. Tunisia is both the pioneer of the Arab spring and its greatest success so far. But even here the political and economic tests are acute, says Vicken Cheterian. If the Arab awakening of 2010-11 is to produce a true success in 2012 and beyond, it must be in Tunisia. The Tunisian revolution was the most "peaceful" among the wave of revolutions that spread from north Africa to the middle east over the past year. The toll of 300 dead there is a tragedy, but by comparison with the catastrophic war in neighbouring Libya (with its around 50,000 casualties) or the relentless killing in Syria, the process of change was remarkable for its restraint.
The ongoing turmoil in Egypt, where the army remains in control and killings continue, also makes the Tunisian case - in which the army withdrew to leave space for political forces after helping to end the twenty-three-year domination of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali - look exemplary. Tunisia's demographic and social realities are an asset here. Release of Unauthenticated Prison-Sex Video Denounced in Defense of Tunisian Interior Minister. Interior Minister Ali Laarayedh during the presentation of new ministers to the Constituent Assembly A video was released January 18th, on Youtube and Facebook allegedly depicting the newly appointed Interior Minister – Ali Laarayedh – performing an intimate, possibly sexual, act with a fellow inmate in a prison cell.
The video was supposedly filmed while he was a political prisoner detained within the Interior Ministry during the dictatorial reign of Tunisia’s ousted President, Zine Abedine Ben Ali. Samir Dilou, the spokesman of the interim government and a member of Ennahda, denounced the release of the video, and stated that it was a fabrication produced by the former regime. He also called upon the need to launch an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the video’s release. The Interior Ministry has refused to comment on the matter. Tunisian Interior Ministry “Ennahda only won because Qatar was supporting them; they were using mosques to influence people. Revolution Story. Al Arabiya inquiry reveals how Tunisia’s Ben Ali escaped to Saudi Arabia. Video: A promo of the three-part documentary “Fleeing Carthage” recounts the dramatic moments that led to the ouster of former Tunisian president Zine ElAbedine Ben Ali. (Al Arabiya) On January 14, 2011, the most critical moments in Tunisia’s modern history and the subsequent facts of the moments were woven behind the scenes and in the corridors of the Tunisian authority, from lowly to lofty positions.
This historic date was the spark that drew the red lines on the region’s map, a region that entered a new chapter entitled: The Revolution. That day witnessed by the Tunisian people reintroduced questions about the reasons that forced the former president, Zine ElAbidine Ben Ali, to leave his palace, and then his country, like a fugitive. Mohammed al-Ghannoushi It all began at 8 a.m. on that morning, when the then-president Ben Ali arrived at his office in the presidential Palace of Carthage, with the ministers of interior and defense and the country’s prime minister, Mohammed al-Ghannoushi. Inside the 'Arab Spring' - Features. Sami Ben Gharbia is a Tunisian human rights campaigner that lived in exile for many years. He is the Advocacy Director at Global Voices and the co-founder of nawaat.org.
Nawaat is a popular Tunisian blog and online news aggregator that played a key role in pushing events forward, providing relevant information and content to the journalists that were covering the Tunisian uprisings. The organisation co-hosted a concert in Tunis on July 2, at the end of the Creative Commons (CC) Arab regional meeting, which sought to celebrate "openness, creativity, innovation and the culture of sharing". Al Jazeera caught up with the activist to get a deeper insight into the role that Nawaat played in the uprisings in Tunisia that went on to become the 'Arab Spring'. Can you tell us little more about Nawaat? Nawaat played a big role in the Tunisian uprising. The event is an attempt to bring young artists from the Arab world and to share this feeling of revolution and change through the sound of music. A Revolution of Equals | Online Only. The women's demonstration. In the days immediately following the toppling of President Zine El Abedine Ben Ali on 14 January, Tunis was a city exhilarated by the success of the revolution.
Energized protestors kept up pressure on the newly formed interim government. A sit-in outside government offices in the Kasbah led to the ousting of the few remaining politicians associated with the old regime. Trade unions, now emboldened, organized strikes to demand better salaries and working conditions. On Habib Bourguiba Avenue, the Tunisian equivalent of the Champs-Elysées, strangers spontaneously gathered to discuss politics, economics and social issues. Under the tree-lined central promenade, near the sweet-smelling popcorn stalls or sitting at the Paris-style cafés, people from all walks of life were conversing. Mattresses and blankets for the sit-in under the rain. Women are very visible in Tunisian society. Women marching down Habib Bourguiba Avenue. The Kasbah under the rain. FT Magazine - Tunisia: after the revolution. It’s a new world on Avenue Habib Bourguiba in Tunis.
This is the Champs-Élysées of the city, where people lounge in sidewalk cafés and tourists usually stroll all the way down to the entrance of the souks in the old town. I have visited Tunisia many times over more than a decade, yet never paid much attention to the tree-lined avenue, named after the founder of the modern Tunisian state. But back in the country three months after the first Arab revolution, which convulsed Tunisia and pushed aside its longtime dictator, I could feel the air of freedom. As if discovering the avenue for the first time, my eyes lingered on the colonial and art nouveau architecture, on the French names of cafés, on the expressions on people’s faces. On the Rue Charles de Gaulle, street sellers usually relegated to markets outside the city centre have laid out their goods, some genuine, some fake. Whether slapped or not, Bouazizi was in a state of rage. Tunisia’s blogosphere was ready for a cause.
Tunisia | tourism | economy | Hammamet | Tunis. European tourists visit handicraft shops in a medina souk on February 15, 2011 in Tunis. Despite political instability and state warnings following the ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, a few tourists still visit Tunisia. Please support our site by enabling javascript to view ads. HAMMAMET, Tunisia — A few months ago this former Mediterranean fisherman's village was a bustling, popular destination for European tourists. But now, several weeks after Tunisia's "Jasmine Revolution," the white sand beaches of Hammamet are empty.
The old fortified town that is normally a busy attraction is deserted: The museums and most souvenir shops are closed, and waiters stand around in empty restaurants hoping for visitors to show up. “I haven't sold a thing in weeks,” said Jihad, a young man who works in a clothing shop. When the protests started in the center of Tunisia in early December and made their way up north, thousands of tourists were evacuated from the resort towns. Tunisia: Hillary Clinton’s Unwelcome Visit. This post is part of our special coverage Tunisia Revolution 2011. In the two months that have followed the ousting of former Tunisian President Ben Ali by revolutionary protests, four United States (US) officials have visited Tunisia: Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, William Burns, the US under-secretary of state for political affairs, and Senators Joseph Lieberman and John McCaine.
On the night of Wednesday 15 March, 2011, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton arrived in capital Tunis after a trip to Egypt. In Egypt, the 25 January Revolution Youth Coalition refused an invitation to meet with Clinton,”due to her negative stance towards the revolution during its inception and the approach of the US Administration towards the Middle East Region,” as the Coalition states. The reaction to the visit of Hilary Clinton in Tunisia did not differ much from Egypt. Protests against Clinton's visit in Tunisian capital Tunis. Bassem Bounenni writes: He adds: We need a revolution in revolution-framing. Political revolutions are complex things; this should go without saying. But many of the commentators on the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt seem to have ignored this fact in favor of social-media triumphalism, a recent variant of a more general strain of cyber-utopianism that dates back to the early days of the web.
I take it as given that this notion is an almost entirely wrongheaded consequence of the need to make succinct statements (for tweet and headline purposes) about complicated social phenomena. But the prevalence of talk about Twitter/Facebook/Wikileaks/etc revolutions has exhibited an irritating secondary effect: it has prompted many charitable, intelligent, and learned individuals to react to it. That is, credible experts have spent far too much time responding to the patently ridiculous media frame that social media somehow “caused” these popular movements, rather than explaining the role of communication (and social media specifically) within revolutionary politics.
Tunisia Protests: The Facebook Revolution. A reader: Tunisia, Twitter, revolutions and the role of the Internet. The social web can be a powerful tool for communication, sharing and remembrance. The Internet would be a neutral tool that could be used for organizing, enlightenment and commerce, or repression, propaganda and crime. Which will it be? In 2011, the safest bet is both. Today, that truth was self-evident in the United States, as a nation remembered Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. online. Over the past week, however, the Internet and its social layer has been given a starring role in the recent events in Tunisia that may be overblown. If you need some quick background on the Tunisian uprising over the past week, click over to Global Voices and read Ethan Zuckerman on revolution in Tunisia. So was what happened in Tunisia a Twitter revolution? In a word, no. “Any attempt to credit a massive political shift to a single factor — technological, economic, or otherwise — is simply untrue,” wrote Zuckerman in Foreign Policy. On amplifying voices: Did Twitter matter? Tunisia’s Twitter revolution? Tunisian State Secretary Says Censorship Is Fine Because The West Does It Too. The Kindling of Change. Since the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, speculating about whether the fervor will spread and to which countries has become something of a world-watcher’s parlor game. So I’ve decided to give over much of my space this week to providing more data for that discussion.
As The New York Times headline declared earlier this week, “Jobs and Age Reign As Factors in Mideast Uprisings.” And the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy has used levels of democracy to identify countries at risk around the world. These are solid measures, but I would add spending on essentials like food (there is nothing like food insecurity to spur agita), income inequality and burgeoning Internet usage (because the Internet has been crucial to the organization of recent uprisings).
Seen through that prism, Tunisia and Egypt look a lot alike, and Algeria, Iran, Jordan, Morocco and Yemen look ominously similar. Please, explore for yourself. The Egypt Riots And Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution In Danger. In early December, 1989, rioting broke out in the western Romanian city of Timosoara. Within weeks, the Ceaucescu dictatorship had fallen, the self-styled ‘Genius of the Carpathians’ and his wife, Elena, having been shot by an impromptu firing squad after a trial that was little more than a kangaroo court that condemned them for one of the things they were not guilty of: genocide.
Before she was killed, Mme. Ceaucescu is said to have screamed, ‘You are murdering the mother of the nation.’ Discontent had been building since the beginning of the 1980s, when Ceaucescu instituted a disastrous program of economic austerity that further impoverished an already poor population, and by 1987, demonstrations by both workers and students were becoming more and more frequent, and fear of the regime less and less pervasive. At the same time, there was increasing restiveness about Ceaucescu’s rule within the Romanian Communist Party. David Rieff is a contributing editor for The New Republic. The Coming "Arab Revolution" Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite With the recent Tunisian uprisings—now termed the “Jasmine Revolution”—and the ensuing giddiness about some impending copycat revolutions soon to be sweeping the “Arab World,” very few voices of reason are being heard.
Troubling as this may sound, one is on solid ground suggesting that there are no “coming revolutions” on the Arab World’s horizons, and that there isn't even a distinct uniform "Arab World" to begin with, let alone one gearing up for en masse popular uprisings and regime changes. Despite many religious, cultural and linguistic similarities among Middle Easterners, the modern Middle East, like the ancient Near East, lacks the requisite historical uniformity or continuity to warrant the reductive appellation “Arab World”—and by inference, it lacks the conditions justifying all the premature talk of a “coming Arab Revolution.” This revelation is nothing new. A Revolution Has Not Been Televised: Viewers Are Misled When They Are Told Social Media Has Changed the Nature of Activism | Age of Engagement. Malcom Gladwell, Your Slip is Showing « Brian Solis Brian Solis.
InShare348 Solidarity Time is always limited, but in these historic times, I wished to add perspective in the hopes of moving this important conversation in a productive direction. Malcolm Gladwell continues his march toward dissension with his latest installment in the New Yorker about social media vs. social activism. Honestly, Gladwell is more than welcome to share his thoughts as it is a democratized information economy after all. I do find it alarming however, that he is wielding his influence through an equally influential medium to spin intellectual and impressionable minds in unrewarding and pointless cycles. In that case Mr. In his piece in the New Yorker he asks, Does Egypt Need Twitter? Right now there are protests in Egypt that look like they might bring down the government. Indeed. Good friend Mathew Ingram published a very compelling argument to Gladwell, “It’s Not Twitter or Facebook, It’s the Power of the Network.”
Why? If unity is the effect, density is the cause. Tags: Interview with Andy Carvin on curating Twitter to watch Tunisia, Egypt. Posted by Ethan on Feb 4th, 2011 in Human Rights, Media | 2 comments Andy Carvin is a pioneer in online organizing, digital journalism and social media. He’s currently “senior strategist” at NPR, helping the radio network develop their digital strategies. For the past month, he’s been one of the most interesting people to follow on Twitter, as he’s been aggregating and curating many streams of information about the protests in Tunisia and Egypt.
I caught up with him today, chatting via Skype as he continued to tweet updates on the situation in Egypt. Ethan Zuckerman: Hey Andy. Andy Carvin: Not too bad; how about yourself? Ethan Zuckerman: Doing fine. Andy Carvin: I can relate. Ethan Zuckerman: Let’s talk Twitter. Andy Carvin: Literally and figuratively, it seems sometimes. Ethan Zuckerman: I just ran analytics, and you’re averaging 400 tweets a day so far this month. Andy Carvin: Jesus.
Ethan Zuckerman: What’s motivated you to follow the Egypt protests in real time like this? Echoes from Tunisia and Egypt: Revolutions without self-proclaimed revolutionaries. Winter of Discontent. Q&A With Steven A. Cook and Jared Cohen on Tunisia. Social networks, digital technologies and political change in North Africa | Tim Unwin’s Blog. Arab world shaken by power of Twitter and Facebook - Page 3. The Arab crisis: food, energy, water, justice. Clement M. Henry: The Tunisian Army: Defending the Beachhead of Democracy in the Arab World. Ablaze the body politic | Al-Masry Al-Youm: Today's News from Egypt. Queda da Ditadura na Tunísia – por Latuff. #Sidibouzid Twitter Hashtag: an analysis of the people spreading the news « Giladon-line. Juan Cole: Tunisia Uprising "Spearheaded by Labor Movements, by Internet Activists, by Rural Workers; It's a Populist Revolution"
An uprising in Tunisia. The brutal truth about Tunisia - Robert Fisk, Commentators. Qui sont les figures de l'opposition tunisienne? - L'EXPRESS. "Peut-être on partira, mais on brûlera Tunis" Anatomy of an Autocracy - By Christopher Alexander. Tunisia: Can We Please Stop Talking About 'Twitter Revolutions'? - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty © 2011. "Révolution du jasmin" : une expression qui ne fait pas l'unanimité. L'après-Ben Ali raconté par les internautes du Monde.fr. Messages from Tunisia. UPDATE 1-Arab web users say Tunisia shows time up for leaders. A Twitter Snapshot Of The Tunisian Revolution: Over 196K Mentions Of Tunisia, Tweeted By Over 50K Users.
A Twitter Snapshot Of The Tunisian Revolution: Over 196K Mentions Of Tunisia, Tweeted By Over 50K Users. France: Our Embarrassing Ex Friend, Monsieur Ben Ali. Tunisia: That 'WikiLeaks Revolution' meme. Was What Happened in Tunisia a Twitter Revolution?: Tech News and Analysis « Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution, and how mobile phones helped it happen. Anthropology connection: manhood and disillusion in Tunisia. Tunisian protests fueled by social media networks.
Shorten & Share | bit.ly | a simple URL shortener. Tunisia's social protests - Tunisia. Tunisia: Yezzi Fock (It’s Enough!) » Nawaat de Tunisie - Tunisia. Tunisia, Algeria: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Tunisian Government Allegedly Hacking Facebook, Gmail Accounts of Dissidents and Journalists. The Tunisian Troubles.