Week 9 of lecture session was on 13th March 2013. At this time, we studied about Arab Spring. The Arab Spring is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations, protests, and civil wars in the Arab world that began on 18 December 2010. To date, rulers have been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen; civil uprisings have erupted in Bahrain and Syria; major protests have broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan; and minor protests have occurred in Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Western Sahara.
There were border clashes in Israel in May 2011, and the protests in Iranian Khuzestan by the Arab minority erupted in 2011 as well. Weapons and Tuareg fighters returning from the Libyan civil war stoked a simmering conflict in Mali which has been described as “fallout” from the Arab Spring in North Africa. The sectarian clashes in Lebanon were described as a spillover violence of the Syrian uprising and hence the regional Arab Spring. In September 2012, a wave of social protests by Palestinians demanded lower consumer prices and resignation of the Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad.
The protests have shared techniques of mostly civil resistance in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches, and rallies, as well as the effective use of social media to organize, communicate, and raise awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and Internet censorship. Many Arab Spring demonstrations have been met with violent responses from authorities, as well as from pro-government militias and counter-demonstrators. These attacks have been answered with violence from protestors in some cases. A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world has been Ash-shab yurid isqat an-nizam (“the people want to bring down the regime”). Some observers have drawn comparisons between the Arab Spring movements and the Revolutions of 1989 (also known as the “Autumn of Nations”) that swept through Eastern Europe and the Second World, in terms of their scale and significance. Others, however, have pointed out that there are several key differences between the movements, such as the desired outcomes and the organizational role of internet technology in the Arab revolutions.
In my opinion, people do Arab Spring because they want to get something better for their country. They do not like they current goverment who does not bring any good changing to their lives. I think, Arab Spring is good as long as there is no victim. They may do it because they need to speak out their opinion, so that they govenment knows what they actually want to the country.
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