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    Self-Immolation Rises As Desperate Tunisians Seek Escape From Poverty

    When a fruit seller set himself on fire, it helped spark a revolution in Tunisia seven years ago. Since then, the suicide method has grown more common, especially among young, unemployed men.
    by Ruth Sherlock Jan 19, 2018 5 minutes
    Hosni Kalaya set fire to himself in the same weeks that Mohamed Bouazizi died from doing so in 2011 in Tunisia. He fears he inspired his brother's self-immolation in 2015.

    In downtown Tunis, Hosni Kalaya watches from the sidelines as Tunisians celebrate the seventh anniversary of the country's revolution. A wide-brimmed baseball cap keeps in shadow his face, badly disfigured by burn scars.

    Kalaya is the less well known instigator of Tunisia's 2011 uprising. Like Mohamed Bouazizi, the fruit seller who set himself on fire after police confiscated his fruit cart, Kalaya's self-immolation in those same weeks also caused Tunisians to take to the streets in protests that ultimately forced President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power.

    But for 42-year-old Kalaya, Jan. 14 marks a much grimmer moment: He sees it as the anniversary of the moment he inspired his half-brother's suicide.

    "My brother was younger than me and always looked to me for inspiration,"

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