18.05.12

This was the year of dissent and street protests as the Arab Spring, Occupy movement and, on the home front, Bersih 2.0 march ramped up the heat in the political arena.

THE year 2011 will always be remembered as a time when the masses in the Arab world finally stood up to the dictators. The Arabian revolts began in Tunisia when an educated but jobless young man set himself on fire to protest the confiscation of fruit and vegetables he was selling as a street vendor, apparently without a permit.

Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in protest of corruption and ill-treatment on Dec 18, 2010 provided the spark that ignited massive riots in Tunisia, a country already seething with resentment at the regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, forcing the strongman who had ruled with an iron fist for 23 years to flee to Saudi Arabia on Jan 14.

The Tunisian protests soon caught on in the wider Arab world, causing the old regimes in Egypt and Libya to topple. Bahrain, Syria and Yemen also saw massive protests, with the Yemeni prime minister finally pressured to resign. Protests also flared in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman and beyond.

Source: Malaysia Star