It all started with a young man who was sprinkled gasoline on the body and set himself on fire.
Bou'azizi Mohamed is a 26 year old graduate without a steady job: he has a stall in Sidi Bouzid (capital of the region Central same name), in Tunisia, which sells fruit and vegetables without permission, in an attempt to help his family. On December 17, 2010 the police confiscated all his goods, and an agent slaps him in front of passers-by. Bou'azizi tries vainly to protest, but the agents are shown inflexible and leave. Hence the desperate gesture. The young man, torn from burns, died Jan. 5, 2011 in a hospital bed. Those flames that impotence and immolation shake profondamentel'intera nation. Within a very short time the protests began to erupt in the region of Sidi Bouzid and surrounding areas - demonstrations that began blood and that are continuing even today in the blood. On 22 December, in the same town, twenty-two Houcine Falhi attaches to the cables for electricity and burn out in the middle of a demonstration, shouting "No to poverty, no unemployment." Two days later, Menzel Bouzaiane (city near the capital), the police fired into the crowd to try to quell the protests and strikes the eighteen year old Mohamed Ammari, who died on the spot, and the 44 year old Belhoussine Shawki El Hadra, who died after a few days of agony. In the meantime there are the actions of violent repression carried out by the regime's police, the wounded, the indiscriminate arrests of protesters and opposition members. There also were cases of torture, as claimed by some lawyers involved in the demonstrations. It is also forbidden to enter mosques. In the recent history of Tunisia, the months of December and January have always been politically very hot times of the year: in January 1978 there was a general strike in 1980 was the time of an insurrection backed by Libya, and finally, in 1984, people poured into the streets to the bread. After more than 20 years, in a revolt that recalls the twilight phase of Ceausescu in Romania, the Tunisian people she finds herself struggling against a pseudo-democratic regime disfigured by the plague of corruption and censorship dwarfing that of China, while the Western world (with some exceptions, almost exclusively online) is completely and shamefully ignoring the story.
KHOBZISTES DO NOT LIKE IT For decades, the Tunisian government and its president Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia have a winning image. The African country was the younger brother who had made it, the child prodigy of the family who, despite an absent family and absolute poverty after years of scholarship and complex financial fraud now runs in Mercedes, sipping cocktails on the banks of developed the sea in a white linen shirt, with yet another girlfriend / model who is waiting in the suite a few 7-star hotel with stockings and a sexual appetite that can barely contain 90-60-90 - and this while the other brothers butcher in fratricidal civil wars are injected heroin in squalid and dirty Vigouroux, contract venereal diseases as they could and are flooded with toxic waste. Beneath the patina
glamorous florida basted by the wise and reassuring propaganda of Tunisia, the reality is anything but glittering: it is dark, frightening, tragic. Although some organizations, including the International Monetary Fund, have praised the estate during the nation's economic crisis and the government has stated that in 2010 the GDP grew by 3.1%, the unemployment is gargantuan: stood at around 14% globally, and in the age group between 15 and 29 touches an impressive 30%.
is the generation of
khobzisti (the unemployed), that which is now setting fire to the streets, which clings to power lines, taking to the streets to try desperately to build a dignity that is always been private - a generation of highly skilled graduates who, after completing the academic cursus, he finds himself on the street selling fruit or junk, or working directly in black, or migrate to other shores, or just decide to end it. The causes of this disastrous impasse in the economy and labor are many. Since 1956, the tacit contract between the government and people was that of "ship's bread," a vast system of state subsidies (bread, coffee, sugar, education, housing at times, even recreational activities) in exchange for political deference . But the last time this contract has begun to crack beyond repair, some tax changes, political and social issues have caused a drastic reduction of state subsidies, further marginalizing the arid agricultural areas of central-south of the country, overwhelmed by adverse natural conditions and little or nothing entrepreneurial capacity of elite country and state.
Tunisia's development model also suffers from excessive specialization and is almost completely dependent on one market, the European Union. By contrast, the growth stragegia under the regime of Ben Ali was set to sectors with low degree of specialization based on manual labor, such as textiles, manufacturing and tourism (mainly directed to the Europeans with low and middle income) - areas that can not clearly provide adequate opportunities for those facing the labor market leaving the university.
Still, investors are protected by the law of Tunisia as a terminally ill patient locked in a cage velociraptor: the total lack of transparency, bureaucracy and oppressive institutions dysfunctional, and no funds are strangling businesses and nipped in the bud the creation of new jobs. To complete the picture there is the distribution of gross national product, another factor of great disparities: 80% of this is concentrated on the coasts, and south-central and western regions, where 40% of the population resides, are record a measly 1 / 5. A COUP AND FOREVER
The current President Ben Ali came to power on November 7, 1987. The regime of former head of state, the old and ailing Habib Bourguiba, gasping for ten years for similar reasons to those that sparked the protests today. That night Ben Ali (then Prime Minister) got rid of its predecessor with a medical certificate of "mental and physical incapacity" and, thanks to a bloodless coup-like, began to establish its regime of iron. With the decisive help of Italy.
The fact emerged in 1999 when "The Republic
" first reported the true history of Ben Ali's coup. Fulvio Martini (former head of SISMI under Craxi, Fanfani Goria, Andreotti), when asked in October 1999 by the John Slaughter led by Pellegrino, said: In the years 1985-1987 we organized a sort of coup in Tunisia, President Ben Ali to put the head of state, replacing Bourguiba who wanted to escape.
The article in the Rome daily continues: According to the statements of
Martini, our country carried out a coup to oust from power a leader ill and dangerous to the stability of the Maghreb area and put a president in command welcome to Italy. [...] There was, says Martini, "a quiet and peaceful transfer of power." Whose merit, he says, is mainly due to two people: Craxi and Giulio Andreotti. Since 1985 he had created in "a politico-diplomatic quite complex. " Had opened "a question of succession to the top of the Tunisian republic" not easily resolved. "It was to be replaced by Bourguiba. Bourguiba, "said the former admiral," was a symbol of resistance against the French, but he was a man of very advanced age and was no longer in physical and mental condition to lead his country. " The wind begins to shake that of Islamic fundamentalism in North Africa comes to be felt also in Tunisia. Bourguiba, recalls Martini, but reacts in a way 'a bit too energetic. " "He threatened to shoot a number of people and it was clear that such a reaction would likely lead to disruptions of heavy negative repercussions in neighboring countries. " And it is here that the Italian government comes into play. Craxi is from 4 August 1983 the Prime Minister. Giulio Andreotti was Foreign Minister. "On their directives," that is on the order of Craxi and Andreotti, Martini says his men to act in Tunisia "country with whom we had excellent relations." "We were able to conclude a first transaction on the main points of disagreement, then proposes a solution satisfactory to all that was accepted and the succession of Bourguiba was a quiet and peaceful transfer of power." President "Welcome to Italy" - the same one that allowed a Craxi chased from detention as an assurance and warning in the golden winter refuge in Hammamet - 21 years to take in hand the continuous administration Tunisia a lethal amalgam composed of authoritarian repression of dissent total from patronage, censorship stifling / capillary ubiquitous and corruption, which has now reached levels strastoferici. Two recently published by WikiLeaks cablegrams effectively delineate the situation. In the first corruption of Tunisia is compared to "a cancer that is growing more and more encouraged by the corrupt practices of President Ben Ali and his family enlarged. In the second, dating back to 2008 and classified "secret" U.S. Ambassador Robert F. Godec, we analyze the true philosophy of the executive Tunisian - that is, "what's yours is mine"
addition to stories about the opaque business of the presidential family, Tunisians also run into corrupt practices at lower levels, For example, the police, the customs and government ministries [...]. Those who rule are considered the main culprits, and the more likely that they remain in power in the system so there is no control.course, the government's response Ben Ali was not long coming: in the moment of a blink WikiLeaks, TuniLeaks (a local clone of the site Assange & co.), and several sites reported that the content of cable have been made to disappear from the web Tunisia. And this further, arrogant bullying act of censorship that has opened another front in protest - a new and potentially face the implications are still uncertain. From that moment on, the battle is being fought on the Internet, certainly with no less intensity than is seen in the streets.
TUNIS, COMPLAINT FORMAT Junta
"We do not have Internet, intranet, we have a national"- Azyz Amamy activist
Tunisia Tunisia has an online complaint system more sophisticated, complex and pervasive in the world. Although the North African country is a secular democracy on paper, the control of the Internet and levels of the Chinese or Burmese, and anyone writing articles deemed unwelcome by the regime is regularly arrested, including blogger1. Agence Tunisienne d'Internet
(ATI) is the agency that deals with everything related to Internet, and operates under the Ministry of Comunicazioni2. The ATI also has control over network infrastructure and therefore, de facto, the Tunisian private provider who are obliged to work to address the Agency of State. Over the last few years, through its armed wing digital Ammar 404 "3, used extensively censorship techniques to eradicate dissent. The most widely used four: DNS filtering, IP filtering, keyword filtering (keyword); selective blockade of the URL (YouTube, for example, is censored since 2007). As expected, the state television and newspapers close to the regime not have the least talked about the fights, if not ridicule or shift the blame for the unrest in phantom external agents or defeatist affairs - the usual, dismal apology used by authoritarian and without restraint. During the protests, therefore, the only reliable source for gathering and sharing of information has become the Internet - and this has sparked a censorship increasingly ruthless, which operates in a very feverish, foaming at the mouth, without discrimination.
These days many activists, writers and bloggers have complained that their Facebook account, Gmail and Twitter have been sabotaged, and their personal data ed'accesso collected unlawfully through the hidden strings of JavaScript code (called phishing
) Tunisian placed in the Internet of ATA (an actual case of hacking of State, therefore). Even as 3G, according to information supplied by protesters and activists who are able to connect only through the proxy, they began to not work in areas where the events took place - of course after the massive use of smartphones and mobile phones to shoot and post real-time news had begun to give much trouble to the government. Help inaspettato4 the cause of the Protestants came from the group of Tunisian hacktivism Anonymous, recently jumped to hit the headlines after DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-
Service) to Mastercard, Paypal, Bank of America and other institutions accounting year (and not) who had removed support WikiLeaks ("Operation Payback"). With a usual statement posted on January 2 AnonNews.org, the group announced the start of 'Operation Tunisia:
This is a warning to the Government of Tunisia: will no longer tolerate attacks on freedom of speech and information of its citizens. Any equipment involved in the complaint will be targeted and will not be vacated until the Tunisian government will not listen to the call for freedom of his people. Stop this situation is the responsibility of the Tunisian Government. Liberate the network, and the attacks will stop, you continue to have this attitude, and will be just the beginning. In fact, the operation is still ongoing. After hitting a series of DDoS sites Presidency, Prime Minister, the Stock Exchange, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Industry, Commerce and others, activists of Anonymous are helping the Tunisians to pull out information, videos, photos and set up networks Tor and to allow a VPN connection relatively safe, away from the eye of Sauron of government censorship. Just as had happened with the protests in Iran, Anonymous protesters is offering a purely technical support, but absolutely vital in a context in which news are unlikely to pierce the steel wall that separates Tunisia from the rest of the world.
the situation is desperate, but not the IRAN
remains to understand why the Western media do not talk about it or talk about it occasionally, treating the subject with extreme enough. The Italian press, which also have an interest to talk about it given the economic and political relations with Tunisia, has hardly produced a single item of note on the case - only some rachiticolancio agency or hasty summaries.
on Facebook turns a note in which it is written that "if this had happened in Iran, rather than in Tunisia, would be on the front pages of every newspaper." In fact, what is happening in "Democratic" Tunisia is a kind of eerie anticipation of some dystopian dangerously unhealthy trends that are taking place in Europe - and beyond. The unspeakable temptation of censorship on the net, the savage cuts to social policies, rising unemployment, the frustration of youth dramatically close to the breaking point: these are the symptoms of a confusing interregnum when the old is dying, and the new one yet born.We can not yet know whether the protests in Tunisia will mark the beginning of the end for the corrupt regime of Ben Ali. However, the current political situation inevitably refers to that of 1975-1976, which dragged biennium Habib Bourguiba to the long, torrid and tempestuous road to decline. Also in January 2011 we are witnessing the same spectacle of a president that rough is aging more and more, totally disconnected from his people, reeling in a desperate and repressive anachronism, almost obsessed with a paranoid pre-Nixon-Watergate.
At the same time, however, we are well aware that the system does not provide a clear mechanism for the democratic selection of his successor - and to be honest, at this moment a successor even exists. Chaos to which Tunisia appears to be irremediably may direct, in the end, simply open the doors of the Palace of Carthage to another Ben Ali, another president elected not put there so that things do not change, ever.
But one thing is certain.
In 1943 Sidi Bouzid was the site of the Battle of the Allies against the Nazis. Now the battle is between Tunisia and its government, and it is a battle for freedom, especially freedom from hunger. A battle for the future.
And who controls the future controls the present too.
0 comments:
Post a Comment