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TUNIS, Tunisia:  Protests in Tunisia are escalating following the death of a Tunisian journalist on Monday.

The scribe, Abderrak Zorgui, was upset and frustrated over the outcome of the Arab Spring which initiated in Tunisia in 2011 and brought about a change in government.

Zorgui, who released a video before his death, complained that the economic conditions since the revolution had not improved and unemployment was still rife.

On Monday he set himself on fire, triggering the protests which accelerated after news filtered through that he had died in hospital.

The scene of the day’s dramatic events was Kasserine, a city of about 80,000 people, and the capital of Kasserine Governorate, in in the central west of the country.

The protests which began after the journalist had set himself on fire became violent, prompting police to fire tear gas into the crowd in an attempt to disperse it.

Protesters disrupted traffic and threw stones. 

Tunisia’s Interior Ministry spokesperson Sofiane Zaag on Tuesday said several people were injured and several arrested, without giving specific numbers.

More protests were planned for Tuesday in the country’s capital city, Tunis.

The death of Zorgui, and the manner in which he died, mirrored that of the self-immolation of Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year old man who set himself on fire on 17 December 2010. He died a little over two weeks later on 4 January 2011.

He was a street vendor and his protest became a major catalyst in the Tunisian Revolution that followed, and the broader Arab Spring movement that swept across the Arab region.

Anger became so strong around the country that the then-president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was forced to step down 10 days after Bouazizi had died.

Later that year Bouazizi was posthumously awarded the Sakharov Prize together with four other people for their contributions to “historic changes in the Arab world.”

The new Tunisian government honored him with a postage stamp, while the London Times made him their “2011 Person of the Year.”

Wikipedia says that according to friends and family, local police officers allegedly targeted and mistreated Bouazizi for years, even during his childhood, regularly confiscating his small wheelbarrow of produce; but Bouazizi had no other way to make a living, so he continued to work as a street vendor. 

Around 10:00pm on 16 December 2010 he had contracted approximately US$200 in debt to buy the produce he was to sell the following day. On the morning of 17 December, he started his workday at 8 :00am. Just after 10:30am the police began harassing him again, ostensibly because he did not have a vendor’s permit. However, according to the head of Sidi Bouzid’s state office for employment and independent work, no permit is needed to sell from a cart.

Bouazizi did not have the funds to bribe police officials to allow his street vending to continue. Similarly, two of Bouazizi’s siblings accused authorities of attempting to extort money from their brother,and during an interview with Reuters, one of his sisters stated, “What kind of repression do you imagine it takes for a young man to do this? A man who has to feed his family by buying goods on credit when they fine him…and take his goods. In Sidi Bouzid, those with no connections and no money for bribes are humiliated and insulted and not allowed to live.”

Bouazizi’s family claims, according to the Wikipedia article, he was publicly humiliated, that a 45-year-old female municipal official, Faida Hamdi, slapped him in the face, spat at him, confiscated his electronic weighing scales, and tossed aside his produce cart.

Bouazizi, angered by the confrontation, went to the governor’s office to complain and to ask for his scales back. The governor refused to see or listen to him, even after Bouazizi was quoted as saying, “If you don’t see me, I’ll burn myself.” Bouazizi then acquired a can of gasoline from a nearby gas station and returned to the governor’s office. While standing in the middle of traffic, he shouted, “How do you expect me to make a living?” He then doused himself with the gasoline and set himself alight with a match at 11:30am local time, less than an hour after the altercation.

Bouaziz’s story infuriated the entire population of Tunisia, and the rest is history.

And now it appears another Tunisian has taken up the baton.