"Long Distance Happening", in Freedom Supermarket, Pietro Ruffo, 2012

Long Distance Happening Ash-sha‘ab yurīd isqāṭ an-niẓām (“The people want to overthrow the regime”) is the slogan that in few weeks from Tunisia has spread also in Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Algeria going across Syria and Lebanon and reaching up rich Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Everywhere the same freedom and dignity aspirations, anywhere the same will to not yield to violence, until at least it was possible. The myth of a passivity of Arab peoples, of their lack of attitude to democracy, as affirm Alain Gresh, has been destroyed1. And maybe, for the first time, it has been the young Arab civil society to inspire the European one also determined to occupy the squares and to express its own discontent towards the political ruling class, its sense of precariousness and lack of future prospects. Los indignados and young European protest movements reached South America, United States and even Russia. The Plaza Puerta del Sol in Madrid was renamed Tahrir Square. The way in which the young Arab population has used social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Flash Mobs, You Tube – in order to spread in a brief lapse of time its ideas and actions seems to become a model also for the others. * * * All started on the 17th of December 2010 in Tunisia. A 26 years old young boy named Muhammad Bouazizi decides to immolate himself, putting gasoline on him and setting fire on himself in front of a city hall office. He was a seller of fruits and vegetables who, after he has suffered the seizure of his banquet by police, accomplished this desperate act. After two weeks of agony, he died on the 4th of January because of severe burns. The boy’s death has led thousands of Tunisians into the squares to protest against the policies of discrimination, inequality and social injustice carried out by the government; it has shaken irreversibly the young Arab civil society – and not only – who decided, after years of inaction, to make its voice heard and to express ardently, but peacefully, its indignation with policies aimed at smothering freedom and individual aspirations. The 14th of January 2011, after 23 years in power, President Ben Ali was forced to leave the country. How many young people are reflected in the anger of this honest boy who worked hard in order to help the family and to build a future, who has been deprived of his only source of income? How many of them have felt the same feeling of injustice towards a government that underestimated unemployed people, most of them graduated, punished the honest people and enriched the corrupted one? In a few hours, the flow of news that went around the world – also thanks to the Qatari broadcasting al Jazeera and internet – allowed thousands of people to connect with the rest of the Arab countries, first in Tunisia, then in Egypt and finally in Libya. “Muhammad Bouazizi, a victim of unemployment and political marginalization”, “Tunisia, 230.000 unemployed graduates”, “Do not steal [even] our revolution”. These are some of the posters displayed – day and night without stopping – in the streets of Tunis, but destined to re-echo and spread to the rest of the Arab countries. In Egypt, the very same year and month that Tunisians have regained their country, thousands of Egyptians from Cairo went on Tahrir Square, that means square of Liberation, to unseat Hosni Mubarak, in power since 1981. Thanks to sit-in on squares, to peaceful demonstrations, to the participation and mobilization of youth, women and even children, on the 11th of February 2011, the President left the country after 33 years of presidency. Here too we find short, concise and targeted 1 Alain Gresh, Ce que change le réveil arabe, Manière de voir, Le monde diplomatique, n°117, Juin – Juillet 2011. messages, all with one common element: the liberation from a dictatorial, corrupt, unfair and ineffective regime. In mid-February, also Libya is mobilized: “It is the People that governs the People”; “We will sit-in until the fall of the regime”. But here the fight becomes harder and more complex. This is due not only to the division inside the Libyan civil society, but also to the OTAN intervention, which has given an international dimension to the conflict and has made clear the intention of other countries to bring down after 42 years the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. After months of violence and civil war, the 20th of October 2011, the Colonel was killed in Sirte. However, not all the Arab countries have seen the downfall of the regime. The heterogeneity of Arab countries and the different western interests influence the way and speed of internal changes. The different autocracies have been formed in historical, political, socio-economic conditions that are different from country to country. Nonetheless, also in Syria, Yemen, Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Morocco – where public immolations are becoming increasingly common – the same slogans, messages and claims spread across regions, with few differences in content. In some we find, in addition to social claims, banners such as: “Kurdish and Arabs together for a peaceful change. Freedom!” as we read in Syria; “Nor Sunnis, nor Shiites: long live national unity!”, is one of the slogan in Bahrain. The Arab people are more and more conscious of religious manipulations and exploitations that for decades Western powers have used in order to divide the society from within and dominate the countries’ future. “Go away [Ali Abdullah Saleh], we are free” say a Yemeni, while in Morocco they want “a more egalitarian constitution”. If in the Arab countries young people struggle in order to gain freedom, democracy and to bring down the autocracies, the European youth is fighting for the restoration and reformation of the same needs. Here young people do not see perspectives for their future, they do not feel represented and they want to overthrow the oligarchy more and more prevailing in political classes. They are groups that have joined together on internet and have made the social networks their own and true weapon of protest and organization. Los indignados movement comes to life on the 15th of May 2011 and it is also intended to spread around all the world. Surely the civil society has changed a lot with the advent of globalization and, more importantly, with the diffusion of internet and the mass use of social networks. Once, there were copies of leaflets or typewritten communications distributed to a large numbers of youths, workers, etc.; there were posters on the streets, sit-in and graffiti on the walls. Today everything is already there, but new tools as the social networks go beyond the forms of control organized by governments and regimes. These tools have permitted to develop in the mind of populations an increasing awareness of the limits of their freedom, they have allowed forms of uncontrolled virtual aggregations, have developed debates and confrontations, they have finally created a new public sphere where it is possible to reestablish a political dimension. In Arab countries they have allowed women participation. In some sociologies’ opinions, the participative web have brought the seed of democracy. It is maybe too early to give this kind of reading of the events, but it is sure that it exists an interpenetration of factors that have influenced the downfall of Arab regimes and that internet – and the way in which the new generations are using it – is bringing global changes. The transnational communication, the uncontrolled flow of information and the speed with which news are diffusing have undermined the rhetoric and political credibility of governing classes. “Once freedom has exploded in the soul of a man, the gods can not anything against this man”. (Jean-Paul Sartre, Le Mosche) Giulia Galluccio, she is graduated in Arabic language and Literature. She is translator and analyst of Arab and European Relations. She works at the European Institute of the Mediterranean of Barcelona (IEMed) in the Arab World and Mediterranean Department.