Source: Reuters
16\02\2011
A 21-year old protester was shot dead after clashes broke out between police and demonstrators in south Yemen on Wednesday, his father said, as unrest spread across the Arabian Peninsula state.
Mohammed Ali Alwani was among two people hit as police fired shots into the air to try to break up around 500 protesters gathered in the southern port town of Aden.
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
Yemen’s President struggling for survival
By Nasser Arrabyee/15/02/2011
The Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has decided to open his office to listen to those who want him to step down.
“The President has decided to open his office in the Presidential Palace to listen closely to all groups for the interest of the nation,” said an official statement Tuesday.
The step came after young people demonstrations chanting “After Mubarak, oh Ali, after Mubarak, oh Ali” started to increase day by day.
The tribesmen were the first groups to come to the Presidential Palace. Since Saturday February 12th, 2011, President Saleh has been receiving tribal leaders from the areas around the capital Sana’a, mainly from his tribe, Hashed, the most influential tribe in Yemen.
The opposition coalition recanted to talk with the government on Monday February 14th, 2011, only one day after they accepted an initiative by President Saleh to resume dialogue and stop protests.
This quick and surprising development came after young people intensified anti-regime demonstrations in the capital Sana’a and outside Sana’a especially in the most educated and most populated province of Taiz, where rival demonstrations turned to violence injuring at least 8 people on Monday.
“We started day-and-night peaceful sit-ins in the Freedom Square (Saffer Station) on Sunday, and we will keep their until our demands are met,” Said Ghazi Al Same’e, one the leaders of the young people demonstrations in Taiz.
“We are not representing any party, we are from all segments of the society, our slogan is : no partisanship, it’s youth revolution.”
An opposition leader said Monday they refused the President Saleh’s initiative for resuming dialogue.
“We looked at it (Saleh’s initiative) as an attempt to rescue the regime not to rescue the nation,” Said Yasin Saeed Noman, the secretary general of the socialist party, the second largest opposition party after the Islamist party Islah, which leads the coalition.
“There is a deep national and political crisis produced by this regime, we should not make dialogue outside this crisis, the dialogue should be about changing the political and social regime.”
The opposition and President Saleh’s party failed to reach an agreement over political and electoral reforms and reached a deadlock last October, when the ruling party said it would go to April, 2011 polls even without the opposition.
The opposition refused elections without reforms and said it would boycott and take to streets. Anti- elections demonstrations started since then. These demonstrations intensified after the toppling of the two regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.
Although the opposition coalition has not yet officially demanded Saleh’s regime should be toppled in all those demonstrations, groups mainly from frustrated young people, inspired and emboldened by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt, say clearly Saleh must step down in their own limited but increasing demonstrations, and also in the bigger demonstrations called for and organized by the opposition coalition.
The opposition officially say they still want serious political and electoral reforms.
Last Sunday, February 13th, 2011, the opposition parties officially accepted an initiative by President Ali Abdullah Saleh for resuming dialogue.
But they said they would take to streets if this dialogue failed like the previous ones.
Less than 24 hours later, the opposition recanted to sit on negotiations table with President Saleh and his party.
They said in statement the initiative was only to rescue the regime from the crisis not to rescue the whole nation from collapsing into chaos.
A leader from the opposition coalition, which includes Islamist, Socialists, and Nasserites, said the reason behind such a recantation was “provocations” from the ruling party.
“ On the same day we accepted the initiative, the ruling party issued a provocative statement with Quran verses that can be understood that those who oppose the ruling party are Qafer (infidels),” said the opposition leader, who preferred not to be named because opportunity to reconcile is still standing.
“The other thing is the violence done by the thugs of the ruling party against the young people demonstrators.”
Earlier this month, president Saleh offered concessions in his initiative including not to run for office when his current term ends in 2013 and that his son would not succeed him.
In a press conference Sunday, February 13, 2011, the opposition said they are ready to negotiate with Saleh for rescuing the country not for rescuing his regime.
They said they would start their dialogue from the last point they reached before they stopped last October.
On February, 5th, 2011, the US President Barack Obama urged the Yemeni opposition parties to avoid provocative actions and to positively respond to President Saleh’s initiative for reconciliation.
On February 2nd, 2011, the President Saleh said , in his initiative on the eve of “Day of Rage” as dubbed by young people through social media, he would not stand for elections when his current term ends in 2013 and that his son would not succeed him.
He said the constitutional amendments, proposed by his party, would be frozen, and April parliamentary elections would be delayed.
In an exceptional meeting with the two chambers of the Parliament, Saleh called the opposition parties to stop demonstrations and come back to dialogue. Saleh’s call comes only one day before big demonstrations called for by both young people and opposition parties.
“I would present concessions after concessions for the interest of the homeland which comes before the personal interests,” Saleh said that exceptional meeting which was boycotted by the opposition parties.
“No extension, no inheritance, no resetting of the clock ,” he said.
The President Saleh said the dialogue should resume from the point they stopped, from the last step reached by his party and the opposition before they failed late last year.
The dialogue would resume from the 4-member committee, which includes two top officials from his party and two top officials from the coalition of the opposition parties.
Abdu Rabu Mansur Hadi, and Abdul Kareem Al Iryani, from the ruling party, and Abdul Wahab Al Ansi, from the Islamist party (Islah) and Yasin Saeed Noman from the Socialist party.
“I would approve what this committee would reach without stubbornness,” Saleh said.
But , in return, the opposition must suspend their demonstrations , rallies, sit-ins and marches, he said.
“We call the opposition for freezing their protests and rallies and sit-ins,” Saleh said.
He warned from violence, sabotage, riots and chaos.
“Every citizen has the right to have weapons to defend his properties, his house, and his family,” Saleh said.
“We do not want to destroy what we built over 49 years,” Saleh said in a reference to the age of the Republic which was proclaimed in 1962 after a revolution which overthrew the religious royal system.
The Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has decided to open his office to listen to those who want him to step down.
“The President has decided to open his office in the Presidential Palace to listen closely to all groups for the interest of the nation,” said an official statement Tuesday.
The step came after young people demonstrations chanting “After Mubarak, oh Ali, after Mubarak, oh Ali” started to increase day by day.
The tribesmen were the first groups to come to the Presidential Palace. Since Saturday February 12th, 2011, President Saleh has been receiving tribal leaders from the areas around the capital Sana’a, mainly from his tribe, Hashed, the most influential tribe in Yemen.
The opposition coalition recanted to talk with the government on Monday February 14th, 2011, only one day after they accepted an initiative by President Saleh to resume dialogue and stop protests.
This quick and surprising development came after young people intensified anti-regime demonstrations in the capital Sana’a and outside Sana’a especially in the most educated and most populated province of Taiz, where rival demonstrations turned to violence injuring at least 8 people on Monday.
“We started day-and-night peaceful sit-ins in the Freedom Square (Saffer Station) on Sunday, and we will keep their until our demands are met,” Said Ghazi Al Same’e, one the leaders of the young people demonstrations in Taiz.
“We are not representing any party, we are from all segments of the society, our slogan is : no partisanship, it’s youth revolution.”
An opposition leader said Monday they refused the President Saleh’s initiative for resuming dialogue.
“We looked at it (Saleh’s initiative) as an attempt to rescue the regime not to rescue the nation,” Said Yasin Saeed Noman, the secretary general of the socialist party, the second largest opposition party after the Islamist party Islah, which leads the coalition.
“There is a deep national and political crisis produced by this regime, we should not make dialogue outside this crisis, the dialogue should be about changing the political and social regime.”
The opposition and President Saleh’s party failed to reach an agreement over political and electoral reforms and reached a deadlock last October, when the ruling party said it would go to April, 2011 polls even without the opposition.
The opposition refused elections without reforms and said it would boycott and take to streets. Anti- elections demonstrations started since then. These demonstrations intensified after the toppling of the two regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.
Although the opposition coalition has not yet officially demanded Saleh’s regime should be toppled in all those demonstrations, groups mainly from frustrated young people, inspired and emboldened by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt, say clearly Saleh must step down in their own limited but increasing demonstrations, and also in the bigger demonstrations called for and organized by the opposition coalition.
The opposition officially say they still want serious political and electoral reforms.
Last Sunday, February 13th, 2011, the opposition parties officially accepted an initiative by President Ali Abdullah Saleh for resuming dialogue.
But they said they would take to streets if this dialogue failed like the previous ones.
Less than 24 hours later, the opposition recanted to sit on negotiations table with President Saleh and his party.
They said in statement the initiative was only to rescue the regime from the crisis not to rescue the whole nation from collapsing into chaos.
A leader from the opposition coalition, which includes Islamist, Socialists, and Nasserites, said the reason behind such a recantation was “provocations” from the ruling party.
“ On the same day we accepted the initiative, the ruling party issued a provocative statement with Quran verses that can be understood that those who oppose the ruling party are Qafer (infidels),” said the opposition leader, who preferred not to be named because opportunity to reconcile is still standing.
“The other thing is the violence done by the thugs of the ruling party against the young people demonstrators.”
Earlier this month, president Saleh offered concessions in his initiative including not to run for office when his current term ends in 2013 and that his son would not succeed him.
In a press conference Sunday, February 13, 2011, the opposition said they are ready to negotiate with Saleh for rescuing the country not for rescuing his regime.
They said they would start their dialogue from the last point they reached before they stopped last October.
On February, 5th, 2011, the US President Barack Obama urged the Yemeni opposition parties to avoid provocative actions and to positively respond to President Saleh’s initiative for reconciliation.
On February 2nd, 2011, the President Saleh said , in his initiative on the eve of “Day of Rage” as dubbed by young people through social media, he would not stand for elections when his current term ends in 2013 and that his son would not succeed him.
He said the constitutional amendments, proposed by his party, would be frozen, and April parliamentary elections would be delayed.
In an exceptional meeting with the two chambers of the Parliament, Saleh called the opposition parties to stop demonstrations and come back to dialogue. Saleh’s call comes only one day before big demonstrations called for by both young people and opposition parties.
“I would present concessions after concessions for the interest of the homeland which comes before the personal interests,” Saleh said that exceptional meeting which was boycotted by the opposition parties.
“No extension, no inheritance, no resetting of the clock ,” he said.
The President Saleh said the dialogue should resume from the point they stopped, from the last step reached by his party and the opposition before they failed late last year.
The dialogue would resume from the 4-member committee, which includes two top officials from his party and two top officials from the coalition of the opposition parties.
Abdu Rabu Mansur Hadi, and Abdul Kareem Al Iryani, from the ruling party, and Abdul Wahab Al Ansi, from the Islamist party (Islah) and Yasin Saeed Noman from the Socialist party.
“I would approve what this committee would reach without stubbornness,” Saleh said.
But , in return, the opposition must suspend their demonstrations , rallies, sit-ins and marches, he said.
“We call the opposition for freezing their protests and rallies and sit-ins,” Saleh said.
He warned from violence, sabotage, riots and chaos.
“Every citizen has the right to have weapons to defend his properties, his house, and his family,” Saleh said.
“We do not want to destroy what we built over 49 years,” Saleh said in a reference to the age of the Republic which was proclaimed in 1962 after a revolution which overthrew the religious royal system.
Monday, 14 February 2011
The unlikely face of Yemen’s uprising
Source : Toronto Star, 15/02/2011
By Michelle Shephard, National Security Reporter
SANAA, YEMEN –The face of Yemen's revolution is lightly powdered and framed by a baby-blue hijab.
Tawakul Karman is not the image that comes to mind when thinking of Yemen, a poor and unstable Arab nation of nearly 24 million, and a country whose name is most often associated these days with Al Qaeda.
But the 32-year-old mother of three and human rights activist has emerged as a leader among those fighting to end President Ali Abdullah Saleh's three-decade rule.
“All Yemeni people say enough, really, enough,” she said, crammed in the back of a Land Cruiser on her way to a student demonstration last week.
“The only solution in Yemen is that he has to go.”
Karman has been a thorn in Saleh's side for years, agitating for press freedom and staging weekly sit-ins to demand the release of political prisoners.
But now, inspired by the revolution in Tunisia and Friday's resignation of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, hundreds are joining her on the streets of the capital.
Among those shouting “Mubarak first, Ali next” is Samia al Agbhari, a petite 30-year-old journalist who has a framed picture of revolutionary Che Guevara on her living room wall and little fear of confronting the regime that she has endured her entire life.
In an interview in her home Friday, al Agbhari said she believed the demonstrations would grow increasingly violent as Yemen's police and the country's omnipresent security services cracked down on dissidents.
Her words proved prophetic. Two days later, riot police swinging their batons indiscriminately attacked demonstrators as they walked near the Yemen Mall.
The Star was warned to stop shooting photos and told more than once to leave the area by plain clothes security officers. Reuters photographer Khaled Abdullah had his camera smashed in the melee and was arrested by the military's Republican Guards before being released an hour later.
Tensions flared on the streets again Monday as pro-Saleh forces attacked student demonstrators.
Ala'a Jarban, a 21-year-old university student in Armani glasses, is another face often seen at demonstrations. He is one of the country's youth leaders pushing for “peaceful change” after losing faith in the political process.
“It somehow sparked a flame in all of us. People saw the impossible happening,” he said of the uprising in Egypt, sitting with other students as they planned future action over coffee at an upscale café called Mokha Bunn. “People are thinking it can happen here.”
NOTWITHSTANDING the youthful exuberance, most analysts are saying slow down, this is not Egypt.
“You can hear the murmur, you don't hear the roar,” said Abdul Ghani al-Iryani, Yemen's leading political analyst. “I think it will take time.”
While the root causes of Egypt's revolution exist here — frustration with autocratic rule, corruption, poverty, unemployment and widespread human rights violations — there are many differences.
Egypt's protest spread quickly throughout the country's middle class, with the help of Facebook, Twitter and Al Jazeera.
Yemen doesn't have a sizable middle class; the country is divided instead into the rich and the poor. There is little access to the Internet and urbanization is low, with only 35 per cent of the population living in cities, “and not all of these are really cities but overgrown villages,” adds al-Iryani.
There is also, of course, khat. The leafy narcotic is a national pastime and by 2 p.m. every day, the majority of the population is kicking back, stuffing their cheeks to cartoon-like proportions with the plant's leaves and talking about revolution rather than waging one. Protests in Yemen typically take place in the morning so as to not interfere with the afternoon chew.
Thousands of demonstrators backed by opposition parties took to the streets earlier this month in a Day of Rage protest, while the government also organized a rally of hundreds of pro-Saleh supporters. The two groups kept their distance and the demonstrations peacefully wrapped up in time for lunch.
Still, few are foolhardy enough to rule out revolution here — not after watching unlikely protests in Tunisia and Egypt bring two stalwart dictators to their knees.
Last week, The Economist rated Yemen the country with the highest potential for unrest in the Arab world. The rating was based on a cocktail of statistics, from the years the government has been in power to corruption and demographic indices.
Last month, Hillary Clinton met with Saleh to emphasize the importance of his cooperation in fighting a Yemen-based Al Qaeda group. It was the first visit of a U.S. Secretary of State to Yemen in 20 years.
The U.S. doubled its military aid to Yemen last year to more than $155 million after Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was tied to high-profile attacks on the U.S., including the failed attempt by the so-called “underwear bomber” to bring down a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day, 2009.
The 69-year-old Saleh has derisively said ruling Yemen is like “dancing on the heads of snakes.” Aside from AQAP, his so-called snake pit today includes an insurgency in the north and a secessionist movement in the south.
“The danger in Yemen is that we already have so many different uprisings,” said Gregory Johnsen, a renowned Yemen scholar at Princeton University. “So if all these different strands of the opposition would coalesce into a single strand against the regime of Saleh, then we're dealing with something the Yemeni government is quite worried about.”
Yemen's state news agency reported Monday that Saleh postponed a trip to Washington next month due to “circumstances in the country.”
Saleh has been offering concessions since the first whiff of a revolution here.
On the eve of the Day of Rage protest, Saleh vowed not to seek re-election when his term ends in 2013, and promised parliament that his son Ahmed would not succeed him. (He has twice promised not to seek re-election, only to run each time due to what he says is popular demand.)
He also said he would lower income taxes and university tuitions, raise the salaries of soldiers and civil servants and tackle the country's unemployment.
Saleh has been in power since 1978 and was appointed president of the Republic of Yemen following the 1990 unification of the north (the conservative home to Saleh's tribe) and the south (once British colony and then Marxist republic).
The north and south have been stuck in this acrimonious marriage for nearly two decades, punctuated by the 1994 civil war. The prospect of another war looms large, and demonstrations in the southern city of Aden happen weekly, if not daily.
Saleh's success in conquering the south during the civil war was thanks in part to the jihadists returning from the Afghan-Soviet conflict. They were only too happy to fight the president's socialist foes.
Not until Al Qaeda attacked the USS Cole in Aden's harbour in 2000, killing 17 American sailors, was Saleh forced to confront the Islamic fighters in his midst.
But like Pakistan's intelligence service, which had difficulty severing ties with the Taliban once the U.S. came calling, many within Saleh's government continued to keep these radical elements close. In 2006, 23 Al Qaeda suspects tunnelled out of the political prison in Sanaa in a spectacular escape that few doubted had inside help. Two of the escapees went on to establish AQAP.
It is difficult to draw clear lines here between political parties or allegiances, which undoubtedly frustrates Western leaders, who like to neatly package foreign players as either friend or foe.
Take Karman's party affiliation, for instance.
Yemen's official opposition is an alliance of three groups known as the Joint Meeting Parties, or JMP. Karman is a member of the Islamist group Islah, the most popular of the three political parties.
Islah's party membership is a diverse mix of tribesmen, businessmen and moderate Islamists who believe in the separation of state and religion. But the party has raised red flags in the West, mainly because of its most notorious member, Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, a former Osama bin Laden adviser whom the U.S. considers a terrorist.
Last October, Islah made international headlines when its ultraconservative members blocked a bill that would make it illegal to marry girls under the age of 17 (some as young as 9 become brides).
But in an example of what Yemenis call a political system that is merely “democratic democracy,” Zindani is both a leading Islah member and a supporter of Saleh. He even backed the president during the 2006 election when the Islah party fielded its own candidate.
Observers say Saleh has managed to hang on to power for so long thanks to his careful adherence to the rule of keeping your friends close, but your enemies closer. So Western support for the autocratic president in an effort to keep people such as Zindani at bay has been foolhardy, analyst al-Iryani says.
“Yeah, I think it's a problem for the West to support Islamic extremists,” said al-Iryani, adding dryly, “as they are doing now.”
THE LATE AFTERNOON sun glows warm through the stained glass windows of Mohammed Abu Lahoum's sitting room in central Sanaa.
He is relaxing against plush crimson pillows, discussing tribal politics with the six leaders who sit on cushions against the opposite wall. All are chewing khat, as is customary at this time of day.
Abu Lahoum is a senior member of Saleh's ruling party and chair of the foreign committee. He is a respected member of the Bakeel, the largest tribal confederation, but only the second most influential. The most powerful tribal confederation is Saleh's.
Abu Lahoum is discussing a killing with the tribal leaders and mediating what compensation is required. A gift of money or weapons is customary. He is asking for patience and by the end of the chew, they have agreed they will meet again.
Yemen's tribes are another important factor that differentiates this country from Tunisia and Egypt.
But as American scholar Johnsen notes, it's a mistake to refer to Yemen's tribal regions as “ungoverned” or “lawless.”
The tribal areas are governed, but by local laws and customs, rather than the laws imposed by the central government.
Abu Lahoum is blunt when he explains why the tribal culture still exists today.
“The people are affiliated to tribes. Why? Because the political parties did not fill in the gap they needed,” he said. “Democracy has not been felt in this part of the world and we hope now that we see change, and I would hope to see real transfer of power, real sharing of power. That's what this area really needs.
“Yemen needs some honesty and sincerity right now, and I cannot just take the position that I have to criticize the opposition and defend the ruling party. It doesn't work. Yemen needs compromise. We have to work in finding this and not collapse into chaos.”
Chaos is a reality in this armed nation, where more than five million are starving, more than 60 per cent of women and 30 per cent of men are illiterate and an even dimmer future looms with dwindling oil and water reserves.
Abu Lahoum said he personally supports the student demonstrations and hopes they continue, as he feels they only increase the pressure on the government and opposition parties.
But he also hopes the majority of Yemenis will remain patient and give the government and opposition breathing room to make concrete changes before they form a mass street movement.
On Sunday, opposition parties agreed to continue talking with the president and hold him to his promises. “Once you start these serious reforms, people will sympathize with you,” Abu Lahoum said.
“But if you keep postponing and you think this problem is going to go away, and you don't do anything, I'm sorry to tell you it's going to come back and it's going to come back much bigger, like a snowball.”
TAWAKUL KARMAN, for one, has run out of patience. She no longer believes her own party can negotiate real change and does not take Saleh at his word.
Her cellphone rings constantly, at least every 90 seconds. A former soldier calls to tell her he will join her next protest. One of the student leaders checks in. Then someone from the city of Taiz, Yemen's former capital, reports that police have arrested demonstrators and the violence seems to be increasing.
“See, it has begun,” she says excitedly.
Behind her are three large framed photos of Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, alongside a family portrait in which she smiles with her husband, Mohammed, who is also a human rights worker, and her 6-year-old son and two daughters, aged 13 and 7.
It is a world apart from her life demonstrating on the street, here in this living room oasis with a potted sunflower and the aromatic smells of lunch wafting in from the kitchen. The television is on in another room, where her husband watches news reports from Taiz.
Karman says she didn't sleep well last night — her shoulder was injured by a police baton at Sunday's demonstration.
“But I was happy. Do you want to know why?” she asks. And then quickly, she answers herself: “Because we are fighting for our freedom.”
She wants the demonstrations to remain peaceful but knows that police brutality will only help her cause and bring more people to the streets.
Sit-ins outside Sanaa University are now held daily, but each Thursday — the first day of the weekend here — Karman plans on staging mass demonstrations to march through the streets.
She is also buoyed by the news from Taiz, where the tribal influence is not as great as it is in Sanaa and the population includes more of the Facebook crowd — young and educated.
“When we have demonstrations here, all the people fear that some of the tribes will come and cause problems,” she says.
“But when Taiz is angry, they are one, and they will export it.”
Like all Yemenis, Karman is unfailingly hospitable and seems near tears when she explains she must attend a meeting and cannot sit together for lunch.
“Tomorrow, or this week, I'll call you,” she says as she rushes into the kitchen.
Planning a revolution, she laughs, is busy work.
By Michelle Shephard, National Security Reporter
SANAA, YEMEN –The face of Yemen's revolution is lightly powdered and framed by a baby-blue hijab.
Tawakul Karman is not the image that comes to mind when thinking of Yemen, a poor and unstable Arab nation of nearly 24 million, and a country whose name is most often associated these days with Al Qaeda.
But the 32-year-old mother of three and human rights activist has emerged as a leader among those fighting to end President Ali Abdullah Saleh's three-decade rule.
“All Yemeni people say enough, really, enough,” she said, crammed in the back of a Land Cruiser on her way to a student demonstration last week.
“The only solution in Yemen is that he has to go.”
Karman has been a thorn in Saleh's side for years, agitating for press freedom and staging weekly sit-ins to demand the release of political prisoners.
But now, inspired by the revolution in Tunisia and Friday's resignation of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, hundreds are joining her on the streets of the capital.
Among those shouting “Mubarak first, Ali next” is Samia al Agbhari, a petite 30-year-old journalist who has a framed picture of revolutionary Che Guevara on her living room wall and little fear of confronting the regime that she has endured her entire life.
In an interview in her home Friday, al Agbhari said she believed the demonstrations would grow increasingly violent as Yemen's police and the country's omnipresent security services cracked down on dissidents.
Her words proved prophetic. Two days later, riot police swinging their batons indiscriminately attacked demonstrators as they walked near the Yemen Mall.
The Star was warned to stop shooting photos and told more than once to leave the area by plain clothes security officers. Reuters photographer Khaled Abdullah had his camera smashed in the melee and was arrested by the military's Republican Guards before being released an hour later.
Tensions flared on the streets again Monday as pro-Saleh forces attacked student demonstrators.
Ala'a Jarban, a 21-year-old university student in Armani glasses, is another face often seen at demonstrations. He is one of the country's youth leaders pushing for “peaceful change” after losing faith in the political process.
“It somehow sparked a flame in all of us. People saw the impossible happening,” he said of the uprising in Egypt, sitting with other students as they planned future action over coffee at an upscale café called Mokha Bunn. “People are thinking it can happen here.”
NOTWITHSTANDING the youthful exuberance, most analysts are saying slow down, this is not Egypt.
“You can hear the murmur, you don't hear the roar,” said Abdul Ghani al-Iryani, Yemen's leading political analyst. “I think it will take time.”
While the root causes of Egypt's revolution exist here — frustration with autocratic rule, corruption, poverty, unemployment and widespread human rights violations — there are many differences.
Egypt's protest spread quickly throughout the country's middle class, with the help of Facebook, Twitter and Al Jazeera.
Yemen doesn't have a sizable middle class; the country is divided instead into the rich and the poor. There is little access to the Internet and urbanization is low, with only 35 per cent of the population living in cities, “and not all of these are really cities but overgrown villages,” adds al-Iryani.
There is also, of course, khat. The leafy narcotic is a national pastime and by 2 p.m. every day, the majority of the population is kicking back, stuffing their cheeks to cartoon-like proportions with the plant's leaves and talking about revolution rather than waging one. Protests in Yemen typically take place in the morning so as to not interfere with the afternoon chew.
Thousands of demonstrators backed by opposition parties took to the streets earlier this month in a Day of Rage protest, while the government also organized a rally of hundreds of pro-Saleh supporters. The two groups kept their distance and the demonstrations peacefully wrapped up in time for lunch.
Still, few are foolhardy enough to rule out revolution here — not after watching unlikely protests in Tunisia and Egypt bring two stalwart dictators to their knees.
Last week, The Economist rated Yemen the country with the highest potential for unrest in the Arab world. The rating was based on a cocktail of statistics, from the years the government has been in power to corruption and demographic indices.
Last month, Hillary Clinton met with Saleh to emphasize the importance of his cooperation in fighting a Yemen-based Al Qaeda group. It was the first visit of a U.S. Secretary of State to Yemen in 20 years.
The U.S. doubled its military aid to Yemen last year to more than $155 million after Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was tied to high-profile attacks on the U.S., including the failed attempt by the so-called “underwear bomber” to bring down a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day, 2009.
The 69-year-old Saleh has derisively said ruling Yemen is like “dancing on the heads of snakes.” Aside from AQAP, his so-called snake pit today includes an insurgency in the north and a secessionist movement in the south.
“The danger in Yemen is that we already have so many different uprisings,” said Gregory Johnsen, a renowned Yemen scholar at Princeton University. “So if all these different strands of the opposition would coalesce into a single strand against the regime of Saleh, then we're dealing with something the Yemeni government is quite worried about.”
Yemen's state news agency reported Monday that Saleh postponed a trip to Washington next month due to “circumstances in the country.”
Saleh has been offering concessions since the first whiff of a revolution here.
On the eve of the Day of Rage protest, Saleh vowed not to seek re-election when his term ends in 2013, and promised parliament that his son Ahmed would not succeed him. (He has twice promised not to seek re-election, only to run each time due to what he says is popular demand.)
He also said he would lower income taxes and university tuitions, raise the salaries of soldiers and civil servants and tackle the country's unemployment.
Saleh has been in power since 1978 and was appointed president of the Republic of Yemen following the 1990 unification of the north (the conservative home to Saleh's tribe) and the south (once British colony and then Marxist republic).
The north and south have been stuck in this acrimonious marriage for nearly two decades, punctuated by the 1994 civil war. The prospect of another war looms large, and demonstrations in the southern city of Aden happen weekly, if not daily.
Saleh's success in conquering the south during the civil war was thanks in part to the jihadists returning from the Afghan-Soviet conflict. They were only too happy to fight the president's socialist foes.
Not until Al Qaeda attacked the USS Cole in Aden's harbour in 2000, killing 17 American sailors, was Saleh forced to confront the Islamic fighters in his midst.
But like Pakistan's intelligence service, which had difficulty severing ties with the Taliban once the U.S. came calling, many within Saleh's government continued to keep these radical elements close. In 2006, 23 Al Qaeda suspects tunnelled out of the political prison in Sanaa in a spectacular escape that few doubted had inside help. Two of the escapees went on to establish AQAP.
It is difficult to draw clear lines here between political parties or allegiances, which undoubtedly frustrates Western leaders, who like to neatly package foreign players as either friend or foe.
Take Karman's party affiliation, for instance.
Yemen's official opposition is an alliance of three groups known as the Joint Meeting Parties, or JMP. Karman is a member of the Islamist group Islah, the most popular of the three political parties.
Islah's party membership is a diverse mix of tribesmen, businessmen and moderate Islamists who believe in the separation of state and religion. But the party has raised red flags in the West, mainly because of its most notorious member, Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, a former Osama bin Laden adviser whom the U.S. considers a terrorist.
Last October, Islah made international headlines when its ultraconservative members blocked a bill that would make it illegal to marry girls under the age of 17 (some as young as 9 become brides).
But in an example of what Yemenis call a political system that is merely “democratic democracy,” Zindani is both a leading Islah member and a supporter of Saleh. He even backed the president during the 2006 election when the Islah party fielded its own candidate.
Observers say Saleh has managed to hang on to power for so long thanks to his careful adherence to the rule of keeping your friends close, but your enemies closer. So Western support for the autocratic president in an effort to keep people such as Zindani at bay has been foolhardy, analyst al-Iryani says.
“Yeah, I think it's a problem for the West to support Islamic extremists,” said al-Iryani, adding dryly, “as they are doing now.”
THE LATE AFTERNOON sun glows warm through the stained glass windows of Mohammed Abu Lahoum's sitting room in central Sanaa.
He is relaxing against plush crimson pillows, discussing tribal politics with the six leaders who sit on cushions against the opposite wall. All are chewing khat, as is customary at this time of day.
Abu Lahoum is a senior member of Saleh's ruling party and chair of the foreign committee. He is a respected member of the Bakeel, the largest tribal confederation, but only the second most influential. The most powerful tribal confederation is Saleh's.
Abu Lahoum is discussing a killing with the tribal leaders and mediating what compensation is required. A gift of money or weapons is customary. He is asking for patience and by the end of the chew, they have agreed they will meet again.
Yemen's tribes are another important factor that differentiates this country from Tunisia and Egypt.
But as American scholar Johnsen notes, it's a mistake to refer to Yemen's tribal regions as “ungoverned” or “lawless.”
The tribal areas are governed, but by local laws and customs, rather than the laws imposed by the central government.
Abu Lahoum is blunt when he explains why the tribal culture still exists today.
“The people are affiliated to tribes. Why? Because the political parties did not fill in the gap they needed,” he said. “Democracy has not been felt in this part of the world and we hope now that we see change, and I would hope to see real transfer of power, real sharing of power. That's what this area really needs.
“Yemen needs some honesty and sincerity right now, and I cannot just take the position that I have to criticize the opposition and defend the ruling party. It doesn't work. Yemen needs compromise. We have to work in finding this and not collapse into chaos.”
Chaos is a reality in this armed nation, where more than five million are starving, more than 60 per cent of women and 30 per cent of men are illiterate and an even dimmer future looms with dwindling oil and water reserves.
Abu Lahoum said he personally supports the student demonstrations and hopes they continue, as he feels they only increase the pressure on the government and opposition parties.
But he also hopes the majority of Yemenis will remain patient and give the government and opposition breathing room to make concrete changes before they form a mass street movement.
On Sunday, opposition parties agreed to continue talking with the president and hold him to his promises. “Once you start these serious reforms, people will sympathize with you,” Abu Lahoum said.
“But if you keep postponing and you think this problem is going to go away, and you don't do anything, I'm sorry to tell you it's going to come back and it's going to come back much bigger, like a snowball.”
TAWAKUL KARMAN, for one, has run out of patience. She no longer believes her own party can negotiate real change and does not take Saleh at his word.
Her cellphone rings constantly, at least every 90 seconds. A former soldier calls to tell her he will join her next protest. One of the student leaders checks in. Then someone from the city of Taiz, Yemen's former capital, reports that police have arrested demonstrators and the violence seems to be increasing.
“See, it has begun,” she says excitedly.
Behind her are three large framed photos of Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, alongside a family portrait in which she smiles with her husband, Mohammed, who is also a human rights worker, and her 6-year-old son and two daughters, aged 13 and 7.
It is a world apart from her life demonstrating on the street, here in this living room oasis with a potted sunflower and the aromatic smells of lunch wafting in from the kitchen. The television is on in another room, where her husband watches news reports from Taiz.
Karman says she didn't sleep well last night — her shoulder was injured by a police baton at Sunday's demonstration.
“But I was happy. Do you want to know why?” she asks. And then quickly, she answers herself: “Because we are fighting for our freedom.”
She wants the demonstrations to remain peaceful but knows that police brutality will only help her cause and bring more people to the streets.
Sit-ins outside Sanaa University are now held daily, but each Thursday — the first day of the weekend here — Karman plans on staging mass demonstrations to march through the streets.
She is also buoyed by the news from Taiz, where the tribal influence is not as great as it is in Sanaa and the population includes more of the Facebook crowd — young and educated.
“When we have demonstrations here, all the people fear that some of the tribes will come and cause problems,” she says.
“But when Taiz is angry, they are one, and they will export it.”
Like all Yemenis, Karman is unfailingly hospitable and seems near tears when she explains she must attend a meeting and cannot sit together for lunch.
“Tomorrow, or this week, I'll call you,” she says as she rushes into the kitchen.
Planning a revolution, she laughs, is busy work.
Security Forces Assaulting ActivistsIn Sanaa Marches, Attacks on Demonstrators, Journalists, HRW says
Source: HRW, 15/02/2011
Sana'a- Yemen’s security forces attacked demonstrators, activists, lawyers, and journalists in Sanaa, the capital, on February 14, 2011, apparently without justification, Human Rights Watch said today.Human Rights Watch and other witnesses observed the attacks, most of them during a protest that began at Sanaa University.
A number of local journalists were beaten by the security forces and groups of government supporters and plainclothes security men arrested, assaulted, and confiscated the materials of international journalists, including a BBC Arabic correspondent.
“President Saleh seems to be borrowing from former President Mubarak’s expired playbook on how to deal with demonstrations,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
“If there’s a lesson President Saleh should have learned by now, it’s that violent attacks on demonstrators will not quell dissent.”Government security forces also appeared to be organizing groups of armed pro-government supporters to assault the anti-government protesters, although in some cases the police on the spot prevented clashes.
In one case the organized government supporters appeared to include children.Students and youth activists began demonstrating against the government at 10 a.m. in front of Sanaa University’s new campus.
Ahmed Seif Hashid, a member of parliament, joined the demonstrators.Faez Noman, a youth activist beaten by police during demonstrations on February 13, called a Human Rights Watch source to say he had been arrested shortly before the demonstration began.
Noman’s colleagues say he is being held at the May 22 Police Station.As about 100 demonstrators assembled at the Sanaa campus, chanting slogans, they were joined by hundreds more. The initial security presence of about 30 men grew to about 50, including police and army – one Special Forces officer, central security, emergency response police, and civilian security men, all identifiable by their uniforms.Pro-government demonstrators began to organize a half-hour later.
Local journalists and activists told Human Rights Watch they saw security forces transporting the government demonstrators to the campus Sanaa’s Tahrir Square, where a permanent camp of government supporters is located.
They appeared to be young, some as young as high school age, but there were no clashes because police physically separated the two sides.At approximately 11 a.m., about 500 members of the lawyers’ syndicate marched toward the new campus from their headquarters and soon joined the student demonstration.
They told Human Rights Watch that their main impetus was an earlier attack on the syndicate’s president, Abdallah Rajih.
Among the leaders of the lawyer’s protest was Khalid al-Anisi, whom security forces arrested during the February 13 demonstration but subsequently released. The lawyers shouted criticisms of government corruption and the government’s prosecutor.The expanded group of anti-government demonstrators then headed for the Justice Ministry.
Security forces tried to stop them, and the lawyers pushed through after a few security men swung clubs at them. But further along, a new group of government supporters appeared.The group included boys who appeared to be of middle school and high school age, holding sticks and clubs and raising pictures of the president.
The boys tried to attack the lawyers, but police prevented them. However, Human Rights Watch observed civilian and uniformed members of the Yemeni security forces organizing and directing the government supporters.
Eventually, the anti-government demonstrators turned back and walked to the university.“Deploying children with weapons, and putting them in the midst of what might easily become violent confrontation, is a particularly abject tactic to staunch public protests,” Whitson said. “The Yemeni government is really scraping the bottom of the barrel here.”Security forces and the armed government supporters also attacked foreign and domestic journalists.
Near the university roundabout, government marchers armed with sticks attacked Abdallah Ghorab, a BBC Arabic correspondent, beating him in the head, face, and body. Ghorab was forced to cut short his transmission.Security officers observed the beating and did nothing to stop it, instead encouraging the attackers, shouting that Ghorab was a spy and that they should attack him, Ghorab and his crew said. The attackers called Ghorab a mason, a spy, and a dog, and accused him of “selling the country for dollars.”
Human Rights Watch saw Ghorab afterward. His nose was swollen, and he had a large bloody cut on his face, from top to bottom.Ghorab said the attackers took him to a white Land Rover, where he saw Hafidh Ma’ayad, president of the Yemeni Economic Association, one of the biggest government-sponsored associations and a senior ruling party official, sitting in the front seat.Ghorab said that Ma’ayad called him a spy.
Central Security officers outside the car advised Ma’yad to let Ghorab go. Ghorab and other witnesses said they saw some of the attackers leave in Ma’yad’s car.“I am not ok, and the country is not ok,” Ghorab angrily told Human Rights Watch.
“This is the result of speaking the truth.”CNN reported that Yemeni security authorities confiscated their video footage on Sunday, but subsequently returned it.“Try as the Yemeni government may to close the world’s eyes and ears to the violence of their security forces against peaceful protesters, it will fail,” Whitson said. “In this day and age, the truth will come out.”
Abdelrahman Barman, a lawyer and official in the leading Yemeni human rights organization HOOD, also reported to Human Rights Watch that he witnessed separate arrests and violence on February 14. About 100 day laborers gathered in the morning near the Beit Bus roundabout, where they usually wait for work, and began to demonstrate and call for the president to resign because they could not find jobs.
Barman saw policemen and general security officers arrest the man who was organizing the protesters, along with others. He said he saw at least 15 riot police attacking the protesters, forcibly dispersing them, and arresting six or seven. They included Yusuf Abdallah al-Jail, Mazin Ahmad, Saddam al-Aliyi, Abdelrahim Hassan, and Qais Sadiq.
It is unclear whether the police have filed charges against them or where the men are being detained.At approximately 1:30 p.m., Barman observed pro-government marchers attacking the student demonstrators with bottles and stones near the new campus.
The students retreated to the university, as campus police officers opened the gates for them. Inside, Barman saw six or seven university police beat seven demonstrators.
Sana'a- Yemen’s security forces attacked demonstrators, activists, lawyers, and journalists in Sanaa, the capital, on February 14, 2011, apparently without justification, Human Rights Watch said today.Human Rights Watch and other witnesses observed the attacks, most of them during a protest that began at Sanaa University.
A number of local journalists were beaten by the security forces and groups of government supporters and plainclothes security men arrested, assaulted, and confiscated the materials of international journalists, including a BBC Arabic correspondent.
“President Saleh seems to be borrowing from former President Mubarak’s expired playbook on how to deal with demonstrations,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
“If there’s a lesson President Saleh should have learned by now, it’s that violent attacks on demonstrators will not quell dissent.”Government security forces also appeared to be organizing groups of armed pro-government supporters to assault the anti-government protesters, although in some cases the police on the spot prevented clashes.
In one case the organized government supporters appeared to include children.Students and youth activists began demonstrating against the government at 10 a.m. in front of Sanaa University’s new campus.
Ahmed Seif Hashid, a member of parliament, joined the demonstrators.Faez Noman, a youth activist beaten by police during demonstrations on February 13, called a Human Rights Watch source to say he had been arrested shortly before the demonstration began.
Noman’s colleagues say he is being held at the May 22 Police Station.As about 100 demonstrators assembled at the Sanaa campus, chanting slogans, they were joined by hundreds more. The initial security presence of about 30 men grew to about 50, including police and army – one Special Forces officer, central security, emergency response police, and civilian security men, all identifiable by their uniforms.Pro-government demonstrators began to organize a half-hour later.
Local journalists and activists told Human Rights Watch they saw security forces transporting the government demonstrators to the campus Sanaa’s Tahrir Square, where a permanent camp of government supporters is located.
They appeared to be young, some as young as high school age, but there were no clashes because police physically separated the two sides.At approximately 11 a.m., about 500 members of the lawyers’ syndicate marched toward the new campus from their headquarters and soon joined the student demonstration.
They told Human Rights Watch that their main impetus was an earlier attack on the syndicate’s president, Abdallah Rajih.
Among the leaders of the lawyer’s protest was Khalid al-Anisi, whom security forces arrested during the February 13 demonstration but subsequently released. The lawyers shouted criticisms of government corruption and the government’s prosecutor.The expanded group of anti-government demonstrators then headed for the Justice Ministry.
Security forces tried to stop them, and the lawyers pushed through after a few security men swung clubs at them. But further along, a new group of government supporters appeared.The group included boys who appeared to be of middle school and high school age, holding sticks and clubs and raising pictures of the president.
The boys tried to attack the lawyers, but police prevented them. However, Human Rights Watch observed civilian and uniformed members of the Yemeni security forces organizing and directing the government supporters.
Eventually, the anti-government demonstrators turned back and walked to the university.“Deploying children with weapons, and putting them in the midst of what might easily become violent confrontation, is a particularly abject tactic to staunch public protests,” Whitson said. “The Yemeni government is really scraping the bottom of the barrel here.”Security forces and the armed government supporters also attacked foreign and domestic journalists.
Near the university roundabout, government marchers armed with sticks attacked Abdallah Ghorab, a BBC Arabic correspondent, beating him in the head, face, and body. Ghorab was forced to cut short his transmission.Security officers observed the beating and did nothing to stop it, instead encouraging the attackers, shouting that Ghorab was a spy and that they should attack him, Ghorab and his crew said. The attackers called Ghorab a mason, a spy, and a dog, and accused him of “selling the country for dollars.”
Human Rights Watch saw Ghorab afterward. His nose was swollen, and he had a large bloody cut on his face, from top to bottom.Ghorab said the attackers took him to a white Land Rover, where he saw Hafidh Ma’ayad, president of the Yemeni Economic Association, one of the biggest government-sponsored associations and a senior ruling party official, sitting in the front seat.Ghorab said that Ma’ayad called him a spy.
Central Security officers outside the car advised Ma’yad to let Ghorab go. Ghorab and other witnesses said they saw some of the attackers leave in Ma’yad’s car.“I am not ok, and the country is not ok,” Ghorab angrily told Human Rights Watch.
“This is the result of speaking the truth.”CNN reported that Yemeni security authorities confiscated their video footage on Sunday, but subsequently returned it.“Try as the Yemeni government may to close the world’s eyes and ears to the violence of their security forces against peaceful protesters, it will fail,” Whitson said. “In this day and age, the truth will come out.”
Abdelrahman Barman, a lawyer and official in the leading Yemeni human rights organization HOOD, also reported to Human Rights Watch that he witnessed separate arrests and violence on February 14. About 100 day laborers gathered in the morning near the Beit Bus roundabout, where they usually wait for work, and began to demonstrate and call for the president to resign because they could not find jobs.
Barman saw policemen and general security officers arrest the man who was organizing the protesters, along with others. He said he saw at least 15 riot police attacking the protesters, forcibly dispersing them, and arresting six or seven. They included Yusuf Abdallah al-Jail, Mazin Ahmad, Saddam al-Aliyi, Abdelrahim Hassan, and Qais Sadiq.
It is unclear whether the police have filed charges against them or where the men are being detained.At approximately 1:30 p.m., Barman observed pro-government marchers attacking the student demonstrators with bottles and stones near the new campus.
The students retreated to the university, as campus police officers opened the gates for them. Inside, Barman saw six or seven university police beat seven demonstrators.
Demonstrations intensify, opposition recant to talk with government in Yemen
By Nasser Arrabyee/14/02/2011
The Yemen opposition refused to talk with the government on Monday, only one day after they accepted an initiative by President Ali Abdullah Saleh to resume dialogue and stop protests.
This quick and surprising development came after young people intensified anti-regime demonstrations in the capital Sana’a and outside Sana’a especially in the most educated and most populated province of Taiz, where rival demonstrations turned to violence injuring about 8 people on Monday.
The opposition refusal also came after President Saleh continued meetings with tribal leaders from the areas around Sana’a and security deployment increased in the streets.
An opposition leader said Monday the opposition coalition refused the President Saleh’s initiative.
“We looked at it (Saleh’s initiative) as an attempt to rescue the regime not to rescue the nation,” Said Yasin Saeed Noman, the secretary general of the socialist party, the second largest opposition party after the Islamist party Islah, which leads the coalition.
“There is a deep national and political crisis produced by this regime, we should not make dialogue outside this crisis, we should talk about changing the political and social regime.”
The opposition and President Saleh’s party failed to reach an agreement over political and electoral reforms and reached a deadlock last October, when the ruling party said it would go to April 2011’s poll even without the opposition.
The opposition said it would boycott and take to streets. Anti- elections demonstrations started since then. These demonstrations intensified after the toppling of the two regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.
Although the opposition coalition has not yet officially demanded Saleh’s regime should be toppled in all those demonstrations, groups mainly from frustrated young people, inspired and emboldened by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt, say clearly Saleh must step down in their own limited demonstrations, and also in the bigger demonstrations called and organized by the opposition coalition.
The opposition officially say they still want serious political and electoral reforms.
Earlier Sunday, The opposition parties accepted an initiative by President Ali Abdullah Saleh for resuming dialogue.
But they said they would take to streets if this dialogue failed like the previous ones.
Earlier this month, Saleh offered concessions in his initiative including not to run for office when his current term ends in 2013 and his son would succeed him.
In a press conference Sunday, February 13, 2011, the opposition said they are ready to negotiate with Saleh for rescuing the country not for rescuing his regime.
They said they would start their dialogue from the last point they reached before they stopped last October.
The Yemen opposition refused to talk with the government on Monday, only one day after they accepted an initiative by President Ali Abdullah Saleh to resume dialogue and stop protests.
This quick and surprising development came after young people intensified anti-regime demonstrations in the capital Sana’a and outside Sana’a especially in the most educated and most populated province of Taiz, where rival demonstrations turned to violence injuring about 8 people on Monday.
The opposition refusal also came after President Saleh continued meetings with tribal leaders from the areas around Sana’a and security deployment increased in the streets.
An opposition leader said Monday the opposition coalition refused the President Saleh’s initiative.
“We looked at it (Saleh’s initiative) as an attempt to rescue the regime not to rescue the nation,” Said Yasin Saeed Noman, the secretary general of the socialist party, the second largest opposition party after the Islamist party Islah, which leads the coalition.
“There is a deep national and political crisis produced by this regime, we should not make dialogue outside this crisis, we should talk about changing the political and social regime.”
The opposition and President Saleh’s party failed to reach an agreement over political and electoral reforms and reached a deadlock last October, when the ruling party said it would go to April 2011’s poll even without the opposition.
The opposition said it would boycott and take to streets. Anti- elections demonstrations started since then. These demonstrations intensified after the toppling of the two regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.
Although the opposition coalition has not yet officially demanded Saleh’s regime should be toppled in all those demonstrations, groups mainly from frustrated young people, inspired and emboldened by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt, say clearly Saleh must step down in their own limited demonstrations, and also in the bigger demonstrations called and organized by the opposition coalition.
The opposition officially say they still want serious political and electoral reforms.
Earlier Sunday, The opposition parties accepted an initiative by President Ali Abdullah Saleh for resuming dialogue.
But they said they would take to streets if this dialogue failed like the previous ones.
Earlier this month, Saleh offered concessions in his initiative including not to run for office when his current term ends in 2013 and his son would succeed him.
In a press conference Sunday, February 13, 2011, the opposition said they are ready to negotiate with Saleh for rescuing the country not for rescuing his regime.
They said they would start their dialogue from the last point they reached before they stopped last October.
Crackdowns on Protestors Continue in Yemen, HRW says
Source: Human Rights Watch, 14/02/2011
New York- Continued assaults, intimidation, and beatings targeting protestors in Yemen raise concerns about the Yemeni government’s respect for the right to free assembly, Human Rights Watch said today.
“The Yemeni authorities have a duty to permit and protect peaceful demonstrations,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Instead, the security forces and armed thugs appear to be working together.”
On the morning of February 11, 2011, students and activists staged an anti-government demonstration in front of the new university in Sanaa, the capital. It grew to the hundreds as onlookers and passersby joined the protestors, who called for Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to resign.Yemeni security forces arrested one youth who was writing slogans for the protestors.
Pro-government thugs carrying sticks then arrived. Known locally as “balataga,” they clashed with the demonstrators. The anti-government protestors headed towards the old university, where they were met by additional security forces.On Qasr Street, demonstrators were confronted by dozens more balataga who carried clubs, axes, the traditional Yemeni daggers called jambia, and electroshock tasers. According to eyewitnesses, the balataga assaulted the demonstrators.
One demonstrator, a middle-aged mechanic named Muhamad who joined the demonstrators while on his way to work, said that he was shocked by a taser, stabbed in his hand, and beaten on his leg, face, and back of the head.“I encourage any persecuted person to demand their rights democratically, because a human is born free,” Muhamad told Human Rights Watch.
“A human is human, not an animal. He can’t be guided by a stick. And I want the regime to treat us like humans. I met people in the demonstration. I found them suffering from the same thing I suffer. So it’s my right to express my opinion and express what I suffer from this current regime.”
New York- Continued assaults, intimidation, and beatings targeting protestors in Yemen raise concerns about the Yemeni government’s respect for the right to free assembly, Human Rights Watch said today.
“The Yemeni authorities have a duty to permit and protect peaceful demonstrations,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Instead, the security forces and armed thugs appear to be working together.”
On the morning of February 11, 2011, students and activists staged an anti-government demonstration in front of the new university in Sanaa, the capital. It grew to the hundreds as onlookers and passersby joined the protestors, who called for Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to resign.Yemeni security forces arrested one youth who was writing slogans for the protestors.
Pro-government thugs carrying sticks then arrived. Known locally as “balataga,” they clashed with the demonstrators. The anti-government protestors headed towards the old university, where they were met by additional security forces.On Qasr Street, demonstrators were confronted by dozens more balataga who carried clubs, axes, the traditional Yemeni daggers called jambia, and electroshock tasers. According to eyewitnesses, the balataga assaulted the demonstrators.
One demonstrator, a middle-aged mechanic named Muhamad who joined the demonstrators while on his way to work, said that he was shocked by a taser, stabbed in his hand, and beaten on his leg, face, and back of the head.“I encourage any persecuted person to demand their rights democratically, because a human is born free,” Muhamad told Human Rights Watch.
“A human is human, not an animal. He can’t be guided by a stick. And I want the regime to treat us like humans. I met people in the demonstration. I found them suffering from the same thing I suffer. So it’s my right to express my opinion and express what I suffer from this current regime.”
Sunday, 13 February 2011
Yemen opposition agrees to resume talks with govt
Source:AFP
13\02\2011
The Yemeni opposition agreed on Sunday to resume talks suspended since October with the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the target of post-Tunisian revolution protests calling for his ouster.
The Common Forum, an alliance of parliamentary opposition groups, is "ready to sign a framework agreement this week ... on (resuming) the national dialogue," it said, in a statement received by AFP.
It said the draft deal calls for the formation of a unity government and the inclusion in the dialogue of the secessionist Southern Movement, the Shiite rebels of northern Yemen, and opposition members in exile.
Talks would resume from the point at which they were suspended on October 31, said the Common Forum, grouping Al-Islah (Reform), which is Yemen's main Islamist opposition, the Yemeni Socialist Party and other smaller factions.
"We urge the authorities to learn a lesson from what happened in Tunisia and Egypt," where massive revolts by the people forced out their respective leaders, it said.
The opposition warned of a "popular uprising" in Yemen, a country they said is weighed down by "corruption, poverty, unemployment, repression, injustice and tyranny."
Egypt- and Tunisia-style protests have been held in Yemen since mid-January calling for Saleh to step down.
On Sunday, anti-riot police used batons to disperse a protest by an estimated 2,000 demonstrators in Sanaa, injuring a woman and making 10 arrests, according to witnesses.
Police also used batons in the southern city of Taez to break up a protest in the main square, arresting 120 demonstrators, participants told AFP.
The Common Forum urged Saleh to prove his goodwill by dismissing his family members and relatives holding top posts in institutions such as the Yemeni army, police, government and regional councils.
Under opposition pressure to stand down, Saleh, in power for 32 years, announced on February 2 a freezing of constitutional amendments that could have seen him president for life and promised that his son would not succeed him.
The president also put off controversial a plan to hold an April election without a promised dialogue on reform and has appealed for an end to street protests.
Elected to a seven-year term in September 2006, Saleh has urged the opposition to resume dialogue aimed at forging a government of national unity.
The current parliament's term was extended by two years to April under a February 2009 agreement between the ruling General People's Congress and the opposition to allow time for dialogue on political reform.
But the talks have stalled since the government decided to hold a legislative election on April 27 without waiting for the dialogue process to run its course. A special committee set up to oversee reform has met only once.
Besides poverty and unemployment in one of the world's poorest country, Saleh's government is grappling a secessionist movement in the south, rebellion in the north, and a regrouping of Al-Qaeda on its soil.
13\02\2011
The Yemeni opposition agreed on Sunday to resume talks suspended since October with the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the target of post-Tunisian revolution protests calling for his ouster.
The Common Forum, an alliance of parliamentary opposition groups, is "ready to sign a framework agreement this week ... on (resuming) the national dialogue," it said, in a statement received by AFP.
It said the draft deal calls for the formation of a unity government and the inclusion in the dialogue of the secessionist Southern Movement, the Shiite rebels of northern Yemen, and opposition members in exile.
Talks would resume from the point at which they were suspended on October 31, said the Common Forum, grouping Al-Islah (Reform), which is Yemen's main Islamist opposition, the Yemeni Socialist Party and other smaller factions.
"We urge the authorities to learn a lesson from what happened in Tunisia and Egypt," where massive revolts by the people forced out their respective leaders, it said.
The opposition warned of a "popular uprising" in Yemen, a country they said is weighed down by "corruption, poverty, unemployment, repression, injustice and tyranny."
Egypt- and Tunisia-style protests have been held in Yemen since mid-January calling for Saleh to step down.
On Sunday, anti-riot police used batons to disperse a protest by an estimated 2,000 demonstrators in Sanaa, injuring a woman and making 10 arrests, according to witnesses.
Police also used batons in the southern city of Taez to break up a protest in the main square, arresting 120 demonstrators, participants told AFP.
The Common Forum urged Saleh to prove his goodwill by dismissing his family members and relatives holding top posts in institutions such as the Yemeni army, police, government and regional councils.
Under opposition pressure to stand down, Saleh, in power for 32 years, announced on February 2 a freezing of constitutional amendments that could have seen him president for life and promised that his son would not succeed him.
The president also put off controversial a plan to hold an April election without a promised dialogue on reform and has appealed for an end to street protests.
Elected to a seven-year term in September 2006, Saleh has urged the opposition to resume dialogue aimed at forging a government of national unity.
The current parliament's term was extended by two years to April under a February 2009 agreement between the ruling General People's Congress and the opposition to allow time for dialogue on political reform.
But the talks have stalled since the government decided to hold a legislative election on April 27 without waiting for the dialogue process to run its course. A special committee set up to oversee reform has met only once.
Besides poverty and unemployment in one of the world's poorest country, Saleh's government is grappling a secessionist movement in the south, rebellion in the north, and a regrouping of Al-Qaeda on its soil.
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