TUNIS — The mother of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian
fruitseller whose desperate protest has shaken strongarm regimes across the
Arab world, says she will stop her grieving because of the success of the
revolution he inspired.

Manoubiyeh Bouazizi, clad in black, still fights to hold
back tears more than two months after the death of her son from gruesome burn
injuries suffered when he set himself alight.

“I am so proud of my son, who is known around the world
and contributed so much to the freedom of his country and other Arab countres.
He must be happy where he is.,” said the mother.

“I will not be sad anymore, because of what has
happened, I will go home and just be proud,” she said after a meeting late
Tuesday with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who paid a special tribute to the
33-year-old Bouazizi.

Hounded by Tunisian officialdom because he did not have a
permit for his street stall, high school dropout Bouazizi doused himself in
petrol on December 17 and set himself on fire in front of the local government
headquarters of Sidi Bouzid.

Public anger turned into deadly protests against President
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who fled the country two weeks after Bouazizi died an
agonizing death in hospital on January 5.

Before the end of the month, Egypt’s leader Hosni Mubarak
had also been forced out of office and protests spread to Libya, Bahrain,
Yemen, Syria and beyond.

“And you, the brave people of Tunisia, have led the
way,” declared the UN chief in a speech at the end of a two-day stay in
Tunis to support its fledgling moves to democracy.

“You are the vanguard of the most epic events of the
new century — the revolutions of 2011,” Ban added.

But he highlighted how “the lone act of self-sacrifice
by an ordinary young man put in motion an extraordinary chain of events.”

Bouazizi “died in despair — not for lack of a job or
livelihood, however modest. No, the real violation was the affront to Mohamed
Bouazizi’s sense of human dignity.

“That was the real crime, against him and so many
others: the daily indignities — the crushing of a people’s potential — his own
aspirations and spirit,” Ban told an audience of Tunisian civic groups.

While Bouazizi’s death has given Tunisians hope, the
problems that fed the anger and frustration in the fruitseller and others who
took to the street remain. Tunisia still has high unemployment and high prices
and the tourists have stayed away since the troubles.

There were demonstrations outside the foreign ministry when
Ban held talks there on Tuesday.

MEO