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Egyptian man dies after setting himself alight
18 January 2011 Last updated at 15:08 GMT
BBC News

A man has died after setting himself on fire in Egypt's northern port city of Alexandria.

Officials say the 25-year-old unemployed man - Ahmed Hashem el-Sayed, who had suffered third-degree burns - died in hospital.

Earlier on Tuesday, another man set himself on fire in the capital, Cairo.

They are the latest such acts in Egypt and the wider North African region, one of which led to the mass protests which toppled the Tunisian government.

An Egyptian security official said the man who set himself on fire in Cairo was a 40-year-old lawyer called Mohamed Farouk Hassan, Reuters news agency reported.

It quoted an unnamed source as saying he shouted slogans against rising prices before setting himself alight.

AFP quoted an official as saying the man was slightly injured and taken to hospital.

It said police had also arrested a man who was carrying jerry cans of petrol near parliament in Cairo, on the presumption that he was going to set himself on fire.

Similar incidents

On Monday a 50-year-old man, Abdu Abdel-Monaim Kamal, set himself alight outside the parliament after shouting anti-government slogans. He was being treated in hospital for minor burns.

He is a restaurant owner and father of four from the city of Ismailia, east of the capital. The website of Egypt's leading Al-Ahram daily said he had repeatedly held heated arguments with local officials over the price of bread.

Similar incidents have been reported in Algeria and Mauritania.

The actions echo those of the 26-year-old Tunisian man whose self-immolation sparked a wave of protest in the country that brought down the government.

Mohamed Bouazizi set fire to himself in the town of Sidi Bouzid in mid-December, after police prevented him from selling vegetables without a permit. He died in early January.

His action was followed by weeks of increasingly violent protests across Tunisia over unemployment, corruption and high food prices which resulted in the resignation of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali last week.

Many in Egypt have voiced the same grievances as the Tunisians.

An Egyptian Facebook group has called for street protests on 25 January, which the organisers are calling a "day of revolution against torture, poverty, corruption and unemployment".

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15 January 2011 Last updated at 00:51 GMT
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Could other Arab countries follow Tunisia's example?
By Roger Hardy Middle East analyst, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington DC BBC

Arabs everywhere identified with Mohamed Bouazizi.

When the 26-year-old Tunisian graduate - despairing of getting a decent job and abused by the police - set fire to himself in a public square, his story resonated far beyond his provincial town.

When he later died of his injuries, he became both a symbol and a martyr.

Now the unrest sparked by his self-immolation has led to the downfall of one of the region's longest-serving autocrats.

Unable to quell the unrest, despite making a string of televised concessions to the protesters, the 74-year-old President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali simply vanished from the scene.

While the impact of the unrest on Tunisia is uncertain, its impact on the region is already apparent.

Arabs identified with the young Tunisian because his problems - unemployment, corruption, autocracy, the absence of human rights - are their problems.

Throughout the region there is a dignity deficit.

What is more, in an age of globalisation, regimes can no longer cut their citizens off from news.

The Arab media - even in countries where they are constrained - could sense their audiences' thirst for news about Bouazizi's death and the extraordinary drama it triggered.

They could not keep silent, as they might have done in the past.
'Message to the West'

But if the Tunisian protesters have sent a message of defiance to Arab rulers, they have sent a rather different message to the West.

For decades, Western governments depicted Tunisia as an oasis of calm and economic success - a place they could do business with.

They turned a blind eye to President Ben Ali's harsh suppression of dissent - and ignored the fact that, while the elite prospered, ordinary Tunisians suffered.

Several dangers lie ahead.

One is that Tunisia falls into chaos - a scenario that would convince Arab rulers to cling more tightly to power rather than sharing or relinquishing it.

Another is that the unrest may spread. It is already apparent - and for broadly similar reasons - in neighbouring Algeria.

In a string of Arab countries, succession issues loom as ageing autocrats confront the unmet aspirations of their youthful and rapidly growing populations.