A father of six children, dealer on the run, was doused with petrol before lighting a lighter in the open market on Wednesday, El-Oued, Algeria. Dozens of people were quickly intervened to try to save him. The day before, a lawyer of forty years has tried to set themselves on fire outside the government headquarters in Cairo, Egypt. Monday is a contractor for 43 years Mauritania has poured a flammable liquid into his car before setting it on fire. He meant by this act, denouncing "the country's political situation and the regime."
Since the immolation, December 17, the young unemployed Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi, became the symbol of the revolution of Tunisia, a dozen people at least have replicated this gesture in the Arab world.One person died of his injuries in Algeria. "These events seem, a priori, bound to each other, tells Michael France24.com Ayari, associate researcher at the Research Institute for the Study of Arab and Muslim world (IREMAM). These countries are in any case face similar problems, such as rising prices "of basic commodities.
"The fire destroyed and regenerates"
For many observers, these sacrifices reflect the desperation of some of the Arab population. By their violence and the fact that they are held in public and not anonymous, they are also political.The immolation "contains a message for power that is: 'I protest', explained to AFP Hefny Kedra, professor of political psychology at Ain Shams University, Cairo.
"This series of sacrifices is a sign of political deadlock, an ideological vacuum, confirms Michael Ayari. It reveals that many things are not in the office of the underbody Arab world. Symbolically, the Fire destroys but also regenerates, like the phoenix rising from the ashes.These gestures can be a political regeneration: in sacrifice, we destroy what destroys us. "
An analysis shared Nacéra Sadou, clinical psychologist and consultant to the Algerian Society of psychological research, quoted by the Algerian daily El Watan. " Immolate is somehow "reclaiming the right to appear, a way to exist, to say 'I'm here,' she says. In the destruction of the relationship between inside and The outside skin is seen as the only means of expression since access to speech is impossible. "
Psycho-sociologist in Beirut, Lebanon, Raja Makki believes, too, that these desperate acts are a means "to exist"."It seems to me that people in the Arab world, is seeking a new identity, says she France24.com. People are fragmented between two models, West and East. They have many problems to exist; citizenship does not exist in the true sense of the term, diets do not protect the individual as a human being, as a citizen. It is a sentiment that has simmered in an indirect and invisible, expressed today. "
Nor religious, nor specificity Arabic
Symptom of a socio-economic, political and ideological self-immolation has, according to Michael Ayari, no religious connotation. "This is currently the social, not religious, which is dominant" in the protest movements of the Arab street, "he says.On Tuesday, the highest institution in Sunni Islam, Al-Azhar, however, stressed that Islam forbids any form of suicide. "Islam does not separate from her body to express discomfort, anger or protest," said the spokesperson of the institution, Mohamed al-Tahtawi Rifa'a, while stating that individuals who committed these acts could be "in a state of mental instability."
Should this be seen, however, specificity of the Arab world? Ayari for Michael, the answer is clearly no. Tibetan Buddhist monks, for example, have repeatedly sacrificed by fire. Russia, China, South Korea or Burma, such events have already occurred.Between 1998 and 2003, hundreds of people have also attempted suicide by immolation in north-western Iran.
If the media today identify with extreme attention to each case immolation in the Arab world because of the Tunisian revolution, it is however clear that the phenomenon is not completely unprecedented in the region. "We have witnessed in recent years all sorts of suicide beyond the traditional, Gaci said Ali, a specialist in social psychology, the Algerian daily" L'Expression ".Young people have committed suicide by self-mutilating to challenge their release lists of homes, while others were thrown overboard, preferring to drown rather than be rescued by the coastguard, "said there.
In Morocco, in 2005, a group of unemployed youth himself had organized a march "from the hiring or death" with a destination of the seat of the Prime Minister's Office, Rabat, threatening to immolate themselves.In Tunisia, a few farmers had also threatened suicide in the late 1960s to protest against the nationalization of agriculture.
In sacrificing himself in his little town of Sidi Bouzid, Mohamed Bouazizi himself has crystallized the challenges and frustrations social and economic policies in a large part of the Arab world, causing a shockwave that was certainly not imagine ...
