Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire

When Mohamed Bouazizi, a young university graduate working as a street vendor in the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid set himself on fire on 17 December, the authorities immediately imposed a media blackout on this neglected region of Tunisia and did not hesitate to physically attack journalists who tried to go there or who dared to talk to the foreign media. As the so-called “traditional” media did not mention the wave of protests that began to sweep the country, the online social media such as Facebook and Twitter filled the gap, becoming the main sources of news and information about these events. Facebook in particularly began being used as platform on which Internet users posted comments, photos and videos. Thanks to Facebook, people in Tunis, Paris, Washington and Cairo could follow what was happening in Sidi Bouzid, Kasserine and Thala, and witness the violent police repression almost as soon as it happened. For nearly three weeks, amateur videos recorded for the most part on mobile phones were the only visual sources of information about these events to which Tunisians and the rest of the world had access. On Twitter, the #sidibouzid topic hashtag was widely followed not only by Tunisian users but also by netizens in the region and all over the world, testifying to an international solidarity movement. Aware of the role being played by Facebook, the authorities reinforced Internet censorship at the start of January 20011 in an attempt to restrict the dissemination of the photos and videos of the protests and the repression, which were being used by the foreign news media that were starting to take an interest in Tunisia. Around 100 Facebook pages linked to the events in Sidi Bouzid were blocked, as well as the articles about the unrest on the websites of such international media as France 24, Al-Jazeera, the BBC and Deutsche Welle. A system that made it virtually impossible to upload photos and videos to Facebook from Tunisia was developed by the government’s Internet censorship department, which Tunisians called “Ammar 404.” Access to the leading video-sharing sites such as Flickr, YouTube, Dailymotion and Vimeo had already been blocked for months, but this was a new development. The police also hacked into certain Facebook accounts in order to obtain the access codes of activists and infiltrate the citizen journalist networks that had sprung up around the events in Sidi Bouzid. Many email accounts were hacked and four bloggers, including Slim Ammamou, were arrested on 6 January. An all-out battle ensued between “Ammar 404” and Tunisia’s netizens, who were supported by the entire blogosphere. To draw attention to Internet censorship in Tunisia, a group of activist hackers launched “Operation: Tunisia,” consisting of a series of cyber-attacks on government websites including those of the president and prime minister.