Eamonn Gearon came to give a talk called: 'Reflections on the Arab Spring, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and beyond', at Marlborough College on Thursday, 6th November in the Garnett Room.
His talk, supported by a colourful slideshow, provided us with a background to the revolutionary year, including scenes from 'Midan Tahrir' (Tahrir Square) in Egypt where he has been living as a journalist. He also explained how the dictatorial governments in Tunisia, Libya and Yemen had abused their power and lost their authority, with the astonishing statistic that Ben Ali (Tunisia) Saleh (Yemen), Gaddafi and Mubarak had held power for a combined total of 127 years and 11 months!
The main focus of the talk was based on his experiences reporting from Tahrir Square and it was riveting to hear his account of how the mob who were in control of the square renamed it "The Liberated Zone". He told a spellbound audience how the protestors displayed banners in different languages and wrote messages on the ground with stones to catch the attention of the western media. Words like 'Facebook' and 'Twitter' were common. There was apparently little violence inside the square, but the government allegedly sent in agitators, to give them an excuse to intervene.
It was also fascinating to hear how the army were viewed as protectors and how there was a huge rise in the sales of 'revolutionary' newspapers. Although many of the upheavals in this region are still ongoing, Eamonn concluded that democracy in the middle east was by no means guaranteed and that with the remarkable imbalance in demographics (most of the countries across north Africa and in the middle east have substantial numbers of people under the age of 30 who are also unemployed), this was going to make this part of the world very unstable for years to come.
Rupert Venn (C3 U6)