Rise Up

When society is broken...

And demands for justice go unmet...

These people don't shut up.

They don't give up.

We are here! We are not going anywhere!

They rise up.

And are you gonna stand and fight?

These are their stories.

Tonight...

A revolutionary movement is about to engulf entire nations.

We saw these protests just swell

and reverberate around the region...

And we were kind of like,

"Can we do that here? Can we do that here?"

As masses of protestors take to the streets...

risking their lives for one goal:

freedom from some of the most repressive regimes in the world.

Chaotic and dangerous uprisings like none before.

You could be killed by almost anyone

and not even be sure who was killing you.

Because once you rise up,

you don't know who will come to knock you back down.

First time I heard the Russian aircraft,

which I will never, like, forget.

Allahu Akbar!

Rise up. The Arab Spring.

It's 2010,

and for decades, the populations of several nations in the Middle East and North Africa,

have been plagued by the same pervasive problems:

oppression, no elections,

and no control over their government.

People were just fed up.

They were fed up from the socio-economic situation that they were in,

the increasing gap between the rich and the poor.

The economies were really a private members' club

where the elite and their friends

really just dig their tentacles into the economy and suck it out,

and everybody else almost went to hell.

Tunisia has had only two rulers since 1956.

Now, it's an economic basket case,

with wealth and opportunity reserved for a tiny portion of the population.

Egypt has been dominated by one man since 1981...

Hosni Mubarak...

And is plagued by corruption, economic mismanagement,

and a ruthless secret police force, the Mukhabarat.

Syria has been ruled by the oppressive al-Assad dynasty since 1971.

Here, stepping out of line could land you in jail, or worse.

These regimes in Egypt and Syria and Tunisia

have one thing in common,

which is that they often disappeared people they disagreed with.

If you went to a police station and asked about them,

then they would typically just say,

"Don't bother asking anymore. He's gone now."

In other Arab countries

like Algeria, Libya, and Bahrain,

the majority live in a world where oppression is the norm.

And so long as their dictators promise

to keep a lid on religious extremism,

the West has turned a blind eye to their abuses.

But as more people become exposed to other ways of living

through the Internet and more global travel,

pressure begins to build for reform.

The push for change begins, as it so often does,

with pressure from young students

who lack hope about the future.

Being a graduate in one of these countries

is the toughest occupation.

Spending your whole life trying to study for something

and dreaming of becoming something

and then realizing that, number one,

there are no chances in the job market;

number two, the government is doing nothing about it.

This highly educated, technologically savvy generation,

is bitterly disappointed with the behavior of their corrupt regimes.

In 2010, this tension between rich and poor, is growing throughout the region,

even in picturesque Tunisia, seen by Westerners as the dandy of the Arab world.

Ben Ali had a small coterie of powerful, rich families around him

who controlled many major industries in the country

and effectively ran much of the national economy,

and he used that, to make sure that he got rich and that they got rich,

and his gamble was, that the public would do well enough

that it would ultimately tolerate this top-down arrangement.

In 2010, the dictator Ben Ali and his extended family,

own almost 1/4 of the businesses in the country.

Meanwhile, the poor, especially the young,

feel like they have no future.

The percentage of jobless people, young people,

and especially young people who had their diploma, was huge.

It was hard also to experience, and to see,

that the people who are close to the regime

get opportunities to have jobs

and the others, no.

It all begins with a young street vendor, named Mohamed Bouazizi,

from the poor southern Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid.

Mohamed Bouazizi was a young fruit and vegetable seller,

but he really dreamed of being someone else.

He studied in university, but found himself at the bottom of the pit,

living a life of destitute, of poverty.

And on a day in November 2010,

Mohamed Bouazizi went to his job that day

to sell fruit and vegetables in Sidi Bouzid

without a license, a license that you need

to be able to pay a bribe to acquire,

and he didn't have that license.

A policewoman slapped him on the face

and he get to fight with her

and she confiscated all the fruit.

So he gets angry and he said, "I'm not...

I will not shut up and I will protest against it."

Bouazizi takes his complaints to the local authorities.

He did everything that he could possibly do

and, finding no answers,

doused himself in paint thinner and kerosene

and set himself on light.

Mohamed Bouazizi, knowing that he had absolutely nothing left in front of him,

burnt himself alive.

I couldn't have imagined it.

Mohamed was not sick or insane,

but the clerks at the municipality, always made trouble for him.

They always took away his weighing scales.

Because of the oppression and the pressure, he set himself alight.

Bouazizi is rushed to the hospital.

News of his protest, spreads like wildfire.

They love him because he was the...

he was a poor guy, simple guy, yes, and now he's a hero.

He's a symbol. He's a...

I thank him because he freed me of my fear of oppression.

Government. Fear of the government.

His desperate act finally ignites protests.

Starting in Bouazizi's hometown,

they spread to other locations in the rural south.

You hear a lot of:

"We want freedom, dignity.

We want back our country."

So the people say that...

"Bread, freedom, and dignity."

The most revolutionary part was, that protestors and civilians of all stripes,

came onto the street, but also came onto our screens

and began to describe their leaders,

not as the secular strongman who kept Islamism at bay for the West,

but they painted them as human rights abusers.

They painted them as thieves.

And in their hearts said that,

"We will not accept this injustice anymore."

For years, Tunisians lived quietly

under the heel of government oppression

and crushing poverty.

Now, Bouazizi's solitary act of rebellion

has inspired the nation to rise up together.

It became the story of Tunisia,

that protestors became unwilling to abandon the streets

until their demands were met,

and the first demand were that these autocrats had to leave.

Even as Bouazizi remains in critical condition at the hospital,

President Ben Ali claims on national television,

that the protests are the work of extremists and mercenaries.

He makes it clear that the protests will be met with firm punishment,

using his most powerful secret weapon.

It was the Tunisian police

that were really kind of the silent danger in Tunisian politics.

They had huge powers

and exercised an immense amount of control over all networks,

and they were really the deep state,

they were the intelligence, they were elite members

that were associated with former politicians.

People were being arrested or people were being kidnapped

and detained or even killed.

On December 24th, he makes good on his threats.

In the week after the self-immolation of a desperate fruit seller,

Tunisia's people have taken to the streets,

demanding the removal of President Ben Ali.

Now, the regime is ready to fight back.

Tunisian police force, in the early days of the protests,

tried to enforce a crackdown on protestors.

Some protestors were beaten. Some protestors were arrested.

In the wake of the government's violent response,

protests spread and intensified.

What makes this so different from any previous revolution in the region,

is, the people have a new weapon of their own:

the Internet.

The protestors communicate and organize,

using social media,

like Twitter and Facebook.

Activists, very quick, they started to film everything

and put it on Facebook.

Social media was really the utopia for a lot of protestors.

They turned to social media to organize protests.

They turned to social media

to tell the media in the West and people in the West,

about their lives and what they were living under.

They turned to social media to live-stream

the final moments of their lives.

Desperate to regain control of the situation,

the Tunisian authorities suspend access to Facebook and YouTube,

but protestors still film protests and revolutionary chants on their phones.

The slogan,

"The people want the fall of the regime,"

spreads across the Arab world.

That feeling that, you know, you're not alone

and its spreading throughout different countries