You may be living in your own country, ruled by a compatriot, but you may not be free. The middle east countries are a perfect example of this. The people in these countries have long suffered under dictatorial autocratic regimes. Outcome of a complex interaction of the political forces, both national and international, and social structure these regimes not only plundered people's wealth but also stalled the over all development of the people over there. This stark reality can be understood by the fact that in spite of the presence of vast amount of wealth and resources, the current state of development of science and technology in Arab countries is so grim that in 2005 there were a total of 13,444 scientific papers were published by all the Arab countries together while 15,455 papers were published from Harvard alone. A long awaited change is becoming visible now.
The man who started it all
The man who started it all
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| Mohamed Bouazizi |
Dec 17, 2010 was a fateful day. 26 years old Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi (a computer science graduate) may have lost his struggle against life but his act kicked off a new struggle - struggle against despots and dictators. The struggle soon spread to Egypt and Yemen and may spread elsewhere too.
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| Mohamed Bouazizi |
Revolution the Gen. Y way
Mark Zuckerberg in his wildest of dreams would have never thought that his baby - Facebook would help in overthrowing governments. Both in the Tunisian as well as the Egyptian revolution (and might be anywhere else in future), protesters used social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to mobilize large crowd for the agitation. So much was the impact that the dictatorial regimes had to disconnect the Internet services itself. Finally technology has some right use!
Suppress not
The mid-eastern revolutions are being viewed as an expression of freedom and people's power. It is important that the western powers like US realize this. Though many of the autocratic regimes are an ally to US, it is people who make up a country. Supporting these regimes would further the bitterness among people against US. And in case of the revolutions getting successful regimes hostile to US could come into place, something which happened in the case of the Iranian revolution. So it is important the US and other western powers , who project themselves as a champions of democracy, support this popular expression of the people and help the people in paving way for democracy.
In all such uprisings army plays a crucial role. It is depressing to see that the army or the police which comprises of common citizens itself, start considering itself at times different from a common man and attack their fellow citizens. It is important that we don't forget our roots.
Police join the protesters in Tunisia
"My People" the music of revolution by Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens)
