Spontaneous protests erupted across Tunisia on Monday, in solidarity with the people of Sidi Bouzid, where riots sparked by the a young fruit-seller's public suicide last week were met with brutal police repression.

Several hundred people gathered on December 27 in front of the Union of Tunisian Workers’ headquarters in Tunis ten days after Mohamed Bouazizi, a poor street vendor in his twenties, set him self on fire in front of the regional government headquarters in the western town of Sidi Bouzid.

His desperate gesture unleashed pent-up anger about the region’s high level of unemployment, slow economic development and rampant corruption , sparking a week of violent clashes between police and protesters in Sidi Bouzid and neighbouring towns. On December 24, police opened fire on a crowd of protesters, killing one.

Two unemployed young men from Sidi Bouzid committed suicide in sign of protest. The first electrocuted himself on a pylon on Wednesday, the second jumped into a well and drowned on Sunday evening.

This kind of popular uprising is extremely rare in Tunisia, which for the past 23 years has been ruled with an iron fist by President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.