Jasmine Revolution

The word Jasmine Revolution, it feels like kind of plantation, yes it is a plantation, but not for the tree or plant, it is for the plantation of Democracy. Now to get the exact mean of this word, we need to go through the last one year’s activities held in the Arab world. 

In Tunisia and the wider Arab world, the protests and change in government are called the Sidi Bouzid Revolt, derived from Sidi Bouzid, the city where the initial protests began. In the media, these events have been dubbed the “Jasmine Revolution” in keeping with the geopolitical nomenclature of "color revolutions", although the comparison is disputed, notably by many Tunisians.

Tunisian revolution that ousted the government started the ’Jasmine Revolution’ and is now a term for other anti-government movements, aided by the Internet, in other countries (typically authoritarian or with a bad human rights record) as a result of the domino-effect the Tunisian revolution seems to have produced. The success of the street protests in Tunisia encouraged dissidents in Egypt to call for the resignation of former President Hosni Mubarak which occured after demonstrations and clashes became even more ferocious.

The term Jasmine Revolution is deemed inappropriate by Tunisian philosopher Youssef Seddik, who insists on the violence that marked an event "perhaps as deep as Bastille Day," and although the term was coined by the Tunisian journalist Zied El Hani, who first used it on his blog on January 13 and initially spread via social media such as Facebook (hence "Revolution Facebook" amongst the youth of Tunisia), it is not in widespread use in Tunisia itself.

Sidi Bouzid and Mohamed Bouazizi

Twenty-six year old Mohamed Bouazizi had been the sole income earner in his extended family of eight. He operated a purportedly unlicensed vegetable cart for seven years in Sidi Bouzid 190 miles (300 km) south of Tunis. On December 17, 2010 a policewoman confiscated his cart and produce. Bouazizi, who had such an event happen to him before, tried to pay the 10-dinar fine (a day's wages, equivalent to 7USD). In response the policewoman slapped him, spat in his face, and insulted his deceased father. A humiliated Bouazizi then went to the provincial headquarters in an attempt to complain to local municipality officials. He was refused an audience. Without alerting his family, at 11:30 a.m. and within an hour of the initial confrontation, Bouazizi returned to the headquarters, doused himself with a flammable liquid and set himself on fire. Public outrage quickly grew over the incident, leading to protests. This immolation and the subsequent heavy-handed response by the police to peaceful marchers caused riots the next day in Sidi Bouzid that went largely unnoticed, although social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube featured images of police dispersing youths who attacked shop windows and damaged cars. Bouazizi was subsequently transferred to a hospital near Tunis. In an attempt to quell the unrest President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali visited Bouazizi in hospital on December 28, 2010. Bouazizi died on January 4, 2011

Though the bulk of protests followed Bouazizi's self-immolation and led to the departure of Ben Ali, protests also continued after his departure in demanding his party be removed from government. Some more minor protests followed the cabinet reshuffle.

Countries affected

Similar protests actually took place in almost all Arab countries from Morocco to Iraq, as well as in other states, ranging from Gabonto Albania, Iran and Kazakhstan, to China. China has censored most media coverage of the Arab world’s popular revolt of the last few weeks leading to difficulty in organizing Jasmine protests in China.

China

China's Jasmine revolution have also bought the Chinese government into action. Chinese security officials questioned or detained scores of activists and warned others against staging protests after an online call was made for demonstrations in 13 cities.

The largely silent crowd gathered in front of a McDonalds restaurant near Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

PRC Government officials arrested activists, added to the normal police presence, disabled some cell phonetext messaging services anddeleted Internet postings about protests planned for 14:00 on 20 February in Beijing, Shanghai and 11 other cities. On the day of the protests, the police turned out en masse to all of the potential protest locations. Small crowds, including quite a few curious onlookers, gathered at the planned site in Beijing and Shanghai but did not chant slogans or hold signs.

China also blocked coverage of the protests in the Arab world that continued after Mubarak's fall.

President Hu Jintao responded by calling top leaders into a "study session" to root out and tackle social issues before they "become threats to stability". In a speech at the Central Party School, Hu called out for tighter restrictions to the internet. On February 18, an architect of the country's Internet monitoring software told a state newspaper that the program, already regarded as among the most stringent in the world, should be strengthened.

Opposition leaders there have supported China's Jasmine revolution for the democracy movements in the Middle East and Mainland China.

Iran

Supporters of the Green Movement gathered in scattered groups for the second time within a week to denounce the death of Saane Zhaleh, 26, and Mohammadi Mokhtari, 22, who were killed in Tehran on Monday. An opposition website affiliated to Mehdi Karroubi, a former presidential candidate, said that one person had been killed in Haft-e-Tir square in central Tehran when security forces opened fire at protesters. Dozens were arrested.

Impact of the internet

The use of communication technologies, and the Internet in particular, has been widely accredited as contributor to the mobilisation of protests. A blog associated with Wired described the intricate efforts of the Tunisian authorities to control such online media as Twitter and Facebook. Other regional regimes were also on higher alert to contain spillover effects that may ensue. Simon R. B. Berdal noted:

As the globally evolving Internet provides ever new access points to virtual discourse forums, it also promotes new civic relations and associations within which communicative power may flow and accumulate. Thus, traditionally ... national-embedded peripheries get entangled into greater, international peripheries, with stronger combined powers... The Internet, consequently, changes the topology of the "centre-periphery" model, by stimulating conventional peripheries to interlink into "super-periphery" structures, which enclose and "besiege" several centres at once.

The New York Times suggested that social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter helped people organise the political revolutions in Egypt where it helped certain classes of protesters organise protests, communicate grievances, and disseminate information.

2010–2011 Middle East and North Africa protests

The 2010–2011 Middle East and North Africa protests are an unprecedented^[1]revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests which have been taking place in the Middle East and North Africa since December 2010. To date Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Jordan,Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen have all seen major protests, and minor incidents have occurred in Iraq, Kuwait, Mauritania, Oman,Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan and Syria. The protests have shared extensive use of techniques of civil resistance in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches, and rallies, as well as the use of social media such as Facebook andTwitter to organise, communicate, and raise awareness in the face of attempts at state repression. Some of these events, notably the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, which have ended in regime change, have been called revolutions.

Numerous factors have led to the protests, including accusations of government corruption, dictatorship, human rights violations, and extreme poverty. Increasing food prices and rates of famine globally have also been a major reason, involving threats to food securityworldwide and prices approaching levels seen during the 2007–2008 world food price crisis.

The protests began on 18 December, 2010 in Tunisia, following Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation in protest at police corruption and ill-treatment. Due to similar hardships in the region and ultimately successful protests in Tunisia, a chain of unrest was started which was followed by protests in Algeria, Jordan, Egypt and Yemen, and to a lesser degree in other, mostly Arab, states. In many cases the climactic days have been termed^[ "day of rage" or some variation thereof.

To date, two heads of state have been overthrown—Tunisia's on January 14 and Egypt's on February 11. Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution led President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee to Saudi Arabia. In Egypt, massive protests began on January 25, and after 18 days of protests, President Mubarak, who had ruled Egypt for 30 years, resigned on February 11. Around the same time, Jordan's King Abdullah named a new prime minister and the president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, announced that he would not seek another term in office in 2013, after what would then be 35 years of rule. During ongoing demonstrations aimed at ousting Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir announced he would not seek reelection in 2015.

Both the volatility of the protests and their profound geopolitical implications have drawn great attention and concern from around the world. The possibility has been raised of the protesters being nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.