{"id":42862,"date":"2013-03-12T09:52:29","date_gmt":"2013-03-12T09:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ghana-mma.com\/2013\/03\/man-sets-himself-on-fire-in-central-tunis\/"},"modified":"2013-03-12T09:52:29","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T09:52:29","slug":"man-sets-himself-on-fire-in-central-tunis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/03\/12\/man-sets-himself-on-fire-in-central-tunis\/","title":{"rendered":"Man sets himself on fire in central Tunis"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A tank is parked on Habib Bourguiba Avenue on January 31, 2013 in Tunis. By Fethi Belaid (AFP\/File)<\/div>\n

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TUNIS (AFP) – A man set himself on fire Tuesday in central Tunis, an AFP reporter witnessed, hours before the country’s lawmakers were to vote on a new government tasked with pulling Tunisia out of a deep political crisis.<\/p>\n

“This is a young man who sells cigarettes because of unemployment,” shouted the man before immolating himself on Habib Bourguiba avenue in front of the municipal building, according to a witness.<\/p>\n

“Allahu Akbar! (God is greatest!)” said the badly burned man who was still conscious as he was rushed to the Ben Arous hospital in a Tunis suburb by emergency services, the witness said.<\/p>\n

Passers-by rushed to douse the flames but not before the man, believed to be in his 20s, had suffered serious burn wounds.<\/p>\n

A hospital source said he was “in a critical condition and only his feet were not burned.”<\/p>\n

“We will give him an anaesthetic because he is feeling the,” the source said, adding that the unidentified man had said to a doctor: “I am sick and nobody wants to take care of me.”<\/p>\n

Habib Bourguiba avenue in central Tunis is the Mecca of the 2011 revolution that ousted former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. On the avenue’s sidewalks many Tunisians eke out a living by selling cigarettes.<\/p>\n

The number of people committing suicide or attempting to take their own lives has multiplied in Tunisia since a young street vendor set himself on fire on December 17, 2010, in a drastic act of protest against police harassment.<\/p>\n

Mohamed Bouazizi’s death in the town of Sidi Bouzid ignited a mass uprising that toppled ex-dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali the following month and touched off the Arab Spring uprisings.<\/p>\n

Economic and social difficulties were the key factors that brought down Ben Ali’s regime and two years since his ouster unemployment and poverty continue to plague the north African country.<\/p>\n

The simmering discontent has in the past few months sparked strikes and protests which often degenerate into violence. In November around 300 people were wounded in a week of clashes with police in the northwest of the country.<\/p>\n

Tunisia has also been struggling to emerge from a political crisis exacerbated by the daylight murder on February 6 murder of Chokri Belaid, a leftist opposition leader.<\/p>\n

Later Tuesday, premier-designate Ali Larayedh was to seek a vote of confidence on his new cabinet line-up from lawmakers in the National Constituent Assembly.<\/p>\n


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A tank is parked on Habib Bourguiba Avenue on January 31, 2013 in Tunis. By Fethi Belaid (AFP\/File) TUNIS (AFP) – A man set himself on fire Tuesday in central Tunis, an AFP reporter witnessed, hours before the country’s lawmakers were to vote on a new government tasked with pulling Tunisia out of a deep political crisis.”This is a young man who sells cigarettes because of unemployment,” shouted the man before immolating himself on Habib Bourguiba avenue in front of the municipal building, according to a witness.”Allahu Akbar! (God is greatest!)” said the badly burned man who was still conscious as he was rushed to the Ben Arous hospital in a Tunis suburb by emergency services, the witness said.Passers-by rushed to douse the flames but not before the man, believed to be in his 20s, had suffered serious burn wounds.A hospital source said he was “in a critical condition and only his feet were not burned.””We will give him an anaesthetic because he is feeling the,” the source said, adding that the unidentified man had said to a doctor: “I am sick and nobody wants to take care of me.”Habib Bourguiba avenue in central Tunis is the Mecca of the 2011 revolution that ousted former dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}