Year 2011
witnessed several revolutions and protests across the world. The year was a
remarkable one in the history of world Politics since a number of rulers, who
were more or less enforcing autocratic rule, were ousted. Undoubtedly
international media played a vital role in bringing of these changes. Again
under the head media, social media played the most important and deciding task
in the protests. The fierce revolutions claimed huge human casualties but
finally brought outstanding result. In many countries till today the agitations
are on and gradually converting the world to a better place to live.
1. Tunisia
The chronic problems of high
unemployment, food inflation, corruption, a lack of freedom of
speech and other political freedoms and poor living conditions led
to a situation of revolution in Tunisia.
Accordingly an intensive campaign of civil resistance, including a
series of street demonstrations began in December 2010. The protests led to the
ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on 14 January 2011, when he
officially resigned after fleeing to Saudi Arabia, ending 23 years in power. Prime
Minister Ghannouchi was also made to resign on 27 February, and Beji Caid el
Sebsi became the Prime Minister. Eventually RCD, the former ruling party of Tunisia was also dissolved and its assets
were liquidated. On 3 March 2011, the president announced the elections for the
Constituent Assembly, which were held on 23 October 2011 with the Islamist
Nahdah Party winning the plurality of seats. The protests inspired similar
actions throughout the Arab world.
2. Egypt
Egyptian revolution began after the
events in Tunisia and led to the ousting of the president Hosni Mubarak. The
Protests began on 25 January in a peaceful and non-violent manner and ran for
18 days. At midnight on 28 January, the Egyptian government attempted to
eliminate the nation's Internet access, in order to restrain the protesters'
ability to organize through social media. But the protest compelled President
Mubarak to dismiss his government. Mubarak also appointed the first Vice
President in almost 30 years. On 10 February, Mubarak ceded all presidential
power to Vice President Omar Suleiman, but announced that he would remain as
President until the end of his term. Nevertheless,
protests continued and Suleiman quickly announced that Mubarak had resigned
from the presidency and transferred power to the Armed Forces of Egypt. The
military immediately dissolved the Egyptian Parliament, suspended the
Constitution of Egypt, and promised to lift the nation's thirty-year
"emergency laws". It further promised to hold free, open elections
within the next six months or by the end of the year at the latest. A civilian,
Essam Sharaf, was appointed as the Prime Minister of Egypt on 4 March to
widespread approval among Egyptians in Tahrir Square. The Egyptian Revolution influenced
other Arab countries to go for a protest including Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan,
Syria and Libya.
3. Yemen
The 2011 Yemen rebellion followed the Tunisian Revolution and occurred
simultaneously with the Egyptian Revolution and other mass protests
in the Middle East in early 2011. A major demonstration of over 16,000
protestors took place in Sana'a, Yemen's capital, on 27 January. Protests
occurred in many towns in both the north and south of Yemen starting in
mid-January. The Demonstration began with the demand against the governmental
proposals to modify the constitution of Yemen. But the demands soon included
Yemen’s unemployment and economic conditions and corruption which finally led a
call for the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. A major demonstration
of over 16,000 protesters took place in Sana'a on 27 January and soon
thereafter human rights activist and politician Tawakel Karman called for a
"Day of Rage" on 3 February. Pressure on Saleh to sign the Gulf Co-operation
Council’s initiative eventually led to his signing of it in Riyadh on 23
November, effectively ending his 33-year-old rule of Yemen and setting the
stage for the transfer of power. Tawakul Karman got 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for
her role in supporting women rights and involvement in the Arab Spring.
4. Libya
Muammar Gaddafi's four-decade-long
dictatorial rule over the oil-rich North African nation of Libya faced a horrible
end on Oct. 20, 2011, but the months preceding his death were similarly bloody.
To end the Gaddafi reign, the NATO operations began in April and progressively
rolled back Gaddafi's forces. But the war drifted on for months as Libya's
rebels struggled to hold their regained ground, while their Western allies —
led by the U.K., France and the U.S. — remained cautious of putting their own
boots on the ground. By the end of fighting, an estimated 20,000 to 40,000
Libyans had died and a huge number of people were displaced as refugees. The
steady toll of air strikes enabled rebel advances to seize the capital,
Tripoli, sending Gaddafi and the last indications of his regime dashing to his
hometown of Sirt. On Oct. 20, after being discovered shrinking in a sewage
ditch, Gaddafi was seized by rebels and killed marking the end of his 42 years
of autocracy in Libya. His body placed on display in a meat locker in the port
city of Misratah.
5. Syria
Protests in Syria started on 26
January, when one case of self-immolation. The demands were for political
reforms and the reinstatement of civil rights, as well as an end to the state
of emergency, which has been in place since 1963. A "day of
rage" was set for 4–5 February, but did not do well. On 6 March, the
Syrian security forces arrested about 15 children in Daraa in Southern Syria
for writing slogans against the regime. The children were tortured brutally and
the rage caught fire. Thousands of protestors gathered in Damascus, Aleppo,
al-Hasakah, Daraa, Deir ez-Zor, and Hama on 15 March with recently released
politician Suhair Atassi becoming an unofficial spokesperson for the
"Syrian revolution". On 18 April 2011, approximately 100,000
protesters sat in the central Square of Homs calling for the resignation of
President Bashar al-Assad. On 31 July, Syrian army tanks stormed several
cities, including Hama, Deir Ez-Zour, Al-Bukamal, Daraa, and Medmah. At least 136 people were killed in
the most violent and bloody day since the uprising started. As a result of the
protest the emergency law was lifted, the 15 children were released, Supreme
State Security Court abolished, Local administration reformed, Citizenship
granted to Kurds and 1,187 political prisoners released out of 30,000 detained.
6. Occupy Wall Street
On Sept. 17,
a couple hundred protesters demonstrating against the excesses of corporate
execs and the pervasive influence of high finance in U.S. politics set up camp
in Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park and refused to leave. It was an unlikely
occupation, one without leaders, agendas or even a clear sense of goals, but it
soon was echoed in myriad cities across the U.S. and the world. To some, Occupy
Wall Street is the left-wing iteration of the Tea Party, directing their rage
not at big government but at the big banks that gutted the world economy and
took billions in bailouts from the U.S. government while awarding themselves
hefty bonuses. But many in the movement see their cause as part of a more
global zeitgeist, in keeping with the anti-austerity demonstrations in Europe
and the leaderless uprisings of the Arab Spring. The Occupy movement has
remained leaderless and spontaneous — demonstrators carry signs advocating everything
from financial reform to healthcare reform— it's still unclear what sort of
real lasting political effect the movement can have.
7. Russia
The Russian protests began due to the 2011 Russian legislative
election process, which many Russians considered to be flawed. Recently on 4
December, 15,000 young people took to the Moscow streets demanding freedom for
political prisoners; annulment of the election results; the resignation of
Vladimir Churo (head of the election commission) and the opening of an official
investigation into vote fraud; registration of opposition parties and new
democratic legislation on parties and elections, as well as new democratic and
open elections. On 10 December 2011, after a week of small-scale
demonstrations, Russia saw the biggest protests in Moscow since the 1990s. In
response to the protests, President Dmitry Medvedev announced over his Facebook
account that, while he did not agree with the opposition's demands, he had
ordered an investigation into the allegations of electoral fraud. Many
thousands of Russian Facebook users responded angrily to his post. Amidst the
protest, the government and United Russia were in turn supported by rallies of
pro-government supporters, including the youth organizations Nashi and the Young
Guard. The revolution is still in progress.
8. Anna Hazare
The protests in the Arab spring also
sparked in India. A series of corruption cases implicating a number of leading
politicians ignited the citizens to organize large protests. Anna Hazare, the
74-year-old activist with a Gandhian air, embarked on a series of hunger
strikes in protest of the graft that pervades all strata of Indian society. Hazare's
fasts — even the threat of them — triggered mass demonstrations of support
across India's major cities and heaped pressure on the government to create an
independent ombudsman body capable of investigating the nation's political
elites — even the Prime Minister — and bringing the corrupt to justice. The
anticorruption bill, which critics fear could erode India's robust, albeit
imperfect, democracy by placing it under the authority of an unelected institution
is still being debated in Parliament.
