The first to fall to the protests during the Arab Spring of 2011, Ben Ali (full name Zine El Abidine Ben Ali) first came to Tunisian power in 1987 as the country's prime minister but became president a month later when Tunisia's first president Habib Bourguiba became too unfit to honour the role of president but lingered on until 2000 when he died.

As with any dictatorship, if you had some choice words to say about Ben Ali, you would die young and gruesomely. The police were vicious as they would beat anyone up (including lawyers) unless you had a bribe prepared. Those who created any kind of political opposition saw a lifetime prison sentence. The president family owned the houses and castles of the rich Tunisians. Only those who had known someone working in the government could get any official papers and if they didn't, they would be stuck waiting. The media was not free which was and still is typical of dictatorships with the internet in Algeria censoring anything bad about the country with a 404 (Page/ File not Found) error message and YouTube was frequently banned and unbanned on a regular basis when the site was launched in 2005.

In fact, the Tunisians lived in fear of the police the most as well as Ben Ali as the police had the courage to murder and open fire which extended to the revolution. If you were a person living in Tunisia long enough to be aware of the police brutality, then you would make a run for it when a police car showed up regardless what you were doing as the police would just beat people up for the heck of it and would take their victim's money whenever they wanted. Despite the revolution having come and gone, police brutality still remains.

So, what kicked off the mother of the Arab Revolution, known as the Jasmine Revolution?

It started with a man named Mohamed Bouazizi who operated a fresh produce cart for 7 years on Rahba Street in Sidi Bouzid which is a city in Tunisia. It was his extended family's sole income and that income was stopped on 17 December 2010 when a city employee took his cart away with its disputed produce of either vegetables or apples, insulted his dead father and slapped him all because Bouazizi was vending produce without a licence. Disheartened after a failed attempt to have his cart returned, Bouazizi went home only to return an hour later where he doused himself in flammable liquids and set himself alight. Following his death came many protests that is called many names like the Tunisian Revolution, the Facebook Revolution (as his extremely graphic death was recorded on mobile devices and shared around the social media site) and the Jasmine Revolution. This culminated in Ben Ali's downfall with his tasteless response to the protesters destroying any remaining respect he had. On 14 January 2011, Ben Ali dissolved the government, declared a state of emergency and resigned. Ben Ali spent the rest of his life in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and when he died on 19 September 2019, he was buried in Medina's Al-Bagi Cemetery, the first and oldest Islamic cemetery in Medina.