Yemen follow Tunisia and Egypt's example : tens of thousands protesters on the streets against the government

ungovernable · Jan 28, 2011

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SAN'A, Yemen—Thousands of Yemenis, inspired by the wave of activism spreading across the Middle East, marched through the capital demanding the removal of their longtime president, in one of the largest protests seen in this autocratic nation in years.

Thousands of Yemenis, inspired by the wave of activism spreading across the Middle East, marched through the capital demanding the removal of their longtime president. Adam Horvath has details. Plus, a new road map for early human migrations.

The demonstrations, organized by a committee of opposition parties, wound through four central districts of the city, with protesters shouting for the removal of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a key U.S. counterterrorism ally whose government has long been criticized by Yemenis for repression and corruption.

Many chanted: "President—leave peacefully before being forced out the Ben Ali way," invoking how mass protests forced the resignation of Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali two weeks ago.

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Demonstrators in San'a, the Yemeni capital, on Thursday, at a protest calling for the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
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Since the reunification of the northern and southern sides of the country in 1990 and a brutal civil war shortly afterward, Mr. Saleh has sidelined opposition groups and placed his relatives and close allies in key military and political posts.

Mr. Saleh has often cited security issues as a reason to stall political change. His government is battling a separatist movement in the south, a rebel group in the north, and al Qaeda cells that have been blamed for attempted terrorist attacks on U.S.-bound flights.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Mr. Saleh to pursue political and economic change, but also reaffirmed U.S. military and developmental support. U.S. aid to Yemen last year was roughly $300 million.
Tens of Thousands Protest in Yemen

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On Thursday, State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley noted Yemen's economic and security challenges, and warned of lumping the country in with other nations in the region. "A solution for Yemen may or may not specifically apply to another country in the region," he said.

Yemen's political groups have a history of showing a united front against the leader. Since mid-2010, they have participated in "National Dialogue" talks with Mr. Saleh's party in attempts to forge a power-sharing agreement. Mr. Saleh called off those talks in late 2010, his aides and opposition officials say, in part due to the opposition's refusal to compromise over their demands.

The protests Thursday, a weekend day in Yemen, were organized by the same steering committee that participated in the talks. Leaders from the Joint Meeting Parties, which comprises Islamic groups and secular Socialists, among others, had met Monday to plan their strategy.

Demonstration organizers said that approximately 100,000 people participated in the San'a marches. The JMP also organized demonstrations in several southern and central provinces, which they said were attended by thousands more people.

In downtown San'a, crowds streamed along the main streets, with police generally letting them pass uncontested.

"The Saleh regime has failed to manage the country for more than 30 years, and now the time has come for the political parties to lead popular protest against this regime," said Aidrous al-Naqib, a representative of Yemen's Socialist Party within the JMP.

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European Pressphoto Agency

Thousands of Yemenis marched through the capital demanding the removal of their longtime president.
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Government officials disputed the opposition's crowd estimates and denounced the protesters. "The opposition is trying to cause chaos in the country, but the people of Yemen will not listen to their wrong call," said Interior Minister Rashad Al-Masri.

JMP leaders said they will hold rolling protests each Thursday until they win political concessions from the president.

Opposition parties have a minority bloc in parliament, but argue that their power has been blunted by elections biased in the ruling party's favor. JMP officials are looking for constitutional and electoral changes that would balance power between parliament and the strong executive controlled by Mr. Saleh.

American officials expressed concern at the breakdown in national dialogue talks—which aimed to achieve those goals—and at constitutional amendments, pushed through parliament last month by Mr. Saleh's party, that overturn term limits that would have forced him from office in 2013.

Yemen suffers from high unemployment and a shrinking income from its rapidly decreasing energy reserves. Almost half of its 23 million people live on $2 a day or less, and a third suffer from chronic hunger, according to the United Nations.

Thousands of protesters, inspired by uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, take to the streets of Yemen's capital, Sanaa, calling for a change of government. Video courtesy of Reuters.

Mr. Saleh announced this week he was raising the salaries for army soldiers and he promised to sharply cut taxes, moves seen as attempts to pacify public anger about the economic pain felt across much of the country.

The protesters chanted for Mr. Saleh to step down and allow for free elections. "What started in Tunisia is not over," shouted the crowd at the university campus.

A competing progovernment protest organized by Mr. Saleh's ruling party, called the General People's Congress, attracted a couple of hundred demonstrators in a different region of the capital.

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Anti-government protesters march Thursday in Radfan, southern Yemen. Yemenis also demonstrated in San'a, the capital, to seek the ouster of the country's president, as dissent mounted across the Middle East.

The popular unrest sweeping across the Middle East sent thousands of protesters into the streets of Yemen and drew an exiled opposition leader home to riot-wracked Egypt, as questions mounted over who will benefit from the convulsions in the Arab world.

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Egyptian demonstrators demanding the ouster of President Mubarak burned tires in Suez on Friday.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and pro-democracy figure Mohamed ElBaradei returned to Egypt on Thursday evening, ahead of protests planned for Friday that promise to be the region's largest demonstration yet. The upheavals—inspired by the popular overthrow of Tunisia's authoritarian president less than two weeks ago—place Egypt at the center of the tectonic rumblings for change across the region.

In Yemen, thousands marched through San'a, the capital, in one of the largest protests seen in this autocratic nation in years. Secularist and Islamist protesters intermingled to shout for the removal of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a key U.S. ally in the global fight against terrorism, whose government has long been criticized domestically for repression and corruption.

The government of Algeria was considering a broad government shuffle amid two weeks of sporadic rioting there, people familiar with the discussions said. And in Tunisia, where protesters continue to call for the removal of officials associated with the old regime, the caretaker government dropped two cabinet officials who were close to the freshly ousted president.

The day's events extended a mood of astonishment that has taken hold in the region over the past two weeks. Suddenly, Arab regimes long viewed as invulnerable are being challenged.

WSJ's Matt Bradley reports on Egyptian violence shutting down stock markets, and the possibility of the collapse of the Egyptian government. Also, John Shipman on S&P downgrading Japan's debt. And, video of kids snowboarding on the streets of NYC.
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PM Report: Middle East Protests Spread to Yemen
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Thousands of Yemenis, inspired by the wave of activism spreading across the Middle East, marched through the capital demanding the removal of their longtime president. Adam Horvath has details. Plus, a new road map for early human migrations.

The domestic equation, and the relative strength of Islamist forces within the opposition, varies markedly from country to country. Yemen, for instance, has a strong Islamist element. But the common strand in the more economically advanced Tunisia and Egypt, observers in these countries say, is that demonstrations have started largely among Internet-savvy, middle-class citizens. As these protests have been viewed on regional television networks by a broader audience, still more people have been emboldened.

That is expected to be the case in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation, where Tuesday's demonstrations were the largest in three decades. Organizers and observers say the demonstrations set to take place after the noon prayers on Friday, a day when most Egyptians are off work, promise to be larger still.

Obama administration officials cautioned against drawing parallels across the region but pushed broadly for governments to respond.

"The status quo in the Middle East and North Africa is not sustainable," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. "They have young populations that are looking for more than their respective countries and governments are currently giving them."

The White House pushed the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to open up his country's political system, reflecting a view inside the administration that delaying reforms only risks weakening the regime in the long run.

"I've always said to him that making sure that they're moving forward on reform—political reform and economic reform—is absolutely critical to the long-term well-being of Egypt," President Barack Obama said in an interview broadcast on YouTube. "You can see these pent-up frustrations that are being displayed on the streets."

Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party said Thursday it is willing to talk to protesters and widen political participation, especially among Egypt's youth.

"All of our activities and policies are focused on the future of the youth," Safwat Al-Sherif, the secretary general of the NDP and the speaker of the Senate, told reporters. He said widespread economic hardship and a rising cost of living were "all items on the agenda" of the party.
More

* Yemenis Rally Against Regime
* Egypt Stocks Plummet Amid Unrest
* Davos: Little Talk of Egypt at First Mideast Panel
* Opinion: Egypt Will Never Be the Same

Small protests continued throughout Egypt on Thursday in cities including Suez. In the early morning hours Friday, Internet service appeared to be down across large swathes of Cairo. The reasons weren't immediately apparent.

A senior U.S. official said late Thursday that the administration was pushing Mr. Mubarak's government to open up the Internet and telecommunications channels to allow the demonstrators to communicate.

Mr. ElBaradei, the 68-year-old former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is seen by a broad range of opposition leaders as a rare secular liberal with the stature to challenge Egypt's political establishment. He arrived in Cairo late Thursday, greeted by friends and some supporters. "It is a critical time in the life of Egypt," he said upon his arrival. "I wish we didn't have to go into the streets to impress upon the regime that they have to change."

Friday's Egyptian rallies—and Mr. ElBaradei's relation to them—are expected to provide an early read on the strength of the bonds between Egypt's newly influential opposition and Mr. ElBaradei, the man they have fitfully embraced as their leader.

The chief architects of Tuesday's rallies in Egypt are members of the National Association for Change, a grouping of opposition movements that Mr. ElBaradei assembled around him last summer. In a country where public dissent is rare and demonstrators infrequent, these organizers spurred tens of thousands of people to turn out to protest the regime of President Mubarak.

Several of these organizers now say they are disappointed with Mr. ElBaradei for spending much of his time outside Egypt, adding that he has returned late for a wave of protests that started without him. The protest's organizers say Mr. ElBaradei will have to regain the trust of demonstrators but concede he is one of the few figures capable of rallying disparate groups around him.

The political ambitions of Mr. ElBaradei remain frustratingly unclear to many of those who support him. Egyptian presidential elections are set for this fall, and the regime's tight grip on power has made it virtually impossible for outside candidates to emerge.

Mr. ElBaradei has said he won't run for president unless Mr. Mubarak makes key changes to the constitution, including lifting barriers for independent candidates.

Those close to Mr ElBaradei acknowledge that his nebulous intentions have disappointed many. His desire to run for president has appeared to waver. But some of Mr. ElBaradei's supporters point to the continuing political vacillation in Tunisia as an example of how even the most organic, grass-roots democracy movements ultimately need strong leadership to allay fears of chaos that could accompany any leadership change.

A crucially important opposition group that has maintained an official distance from this week's demonstrations is Egypt's outlawed but influential Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. ElBaradei successfully wooed the Muslim Brotherhood last year to participate in an opposition signature-gathering campaign. They remain aligned with his general goals, though not his political aims.

The Muslim Brotherhood hasn't officially mobilized its people to take part in the protest, but individual members have done so. A senior U.S. administration official characterized the Brotherhood as hovering around the edges of this week's demonstrations, not directly involved in it. On Thursday night, Reuters reported that Egypt arrested three spokesmen of the Muslim Brotherhood and other members of the group ahead of Friday's planned protests, according the group's lawyer.

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Egyptians pass behind a burnt-out car in a street in Suez, amid fresh demonstrations as protesters called for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.
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Egypt's mix of opposition groups isn't atypical of the region. Yet each country has a different combination. Islamist forces are barely perceptible in Tunisia, purged from the country in a wave of crackdowns in the 1990s. Algeria's secular military has at times fought brutal campaigns against Islamists since the military took control in the early 1990s before an election Islamists were expected to win. Yemen is host to an al Qaeda affiliate. But Thursday's demonstrations were planned by leaders of an opposition umbrella group that includes more moderate Islamic groups, as well as other opposition parties, including secular socialists.

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Tens of thousands of Yemenis demanded the president step down in nationwide protests Thursday, taking inspiration from the popular revolt in Tunisia and vowing to continue until their U.S.-backed government falls.

Yemen is the latest Arab state to be hit by mass anti-government protests, joining Tunisia and Egypt in calls for revolutionary change. The demonstrations pose a new threat to the stability of Yemen, the Arab world's most impoverished nation, which has become a haven for al-Qaeda militants.

"No delays, no delays, the time for departure has come!" shouted protesters, calling for the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled for nearly 32 years. Saleh's government is riddled with corruption, has little control outside the capital, and its main source of income — oil — could run dry in a decade.

The protesters were led by opposition members and youth activists in four parts of the capital, Sanaa. In the southern provinces of Dali and Shabwa, riot police used batons to disperse people, while thousands took to the streets in al-Hudaydah province, an al-Qaeda stronghold along the Red Sea coast.
Self-immolation in Aden

In the southern port city of Aden, a 28-year-old unemployed man set himself on fire to protest the economic troubles in the country. The man, identified as Fouad Sabri, was rushed to the hospital in critical condition, medical officials said. The act is the latest in a wave of attempts at self-immolation across the Arab world, which appear to be inspired by events in Tunisia.

A few hundred pro-government supporters held a counter-protest in Sanaa, but they were greatly outnumbered. There were no immediate reports of violence or major unrest in the capital.

The protests calmed by early evening, but organizers said there was more to come Friday.

Hakim Almasmari, editor in chief of the Yemen Post, said that the protests are the largest in over a decade.

"We estimate at least a hundred thousand protesters, even though the government is trying to make media announce less than that," he said.

"This really shows that the opposition parties are very serious about going against the president.… All chances of having dialogue with the ruling party are vanishing."
Concessions made by president

Saleh has tried to defuse simmering tensions by raising salaries for the army and by denying opponents' claims he plans to install his son as his successor.

After the Tunisian revolt, which forced that country's president to flee into exile, Saleh ordered income taxes slashed in half and instructed his government to control prices. He deployed anti-riot police and soldiers to several key areas in the capital and its surroundings to prevent riots.

That hasn't stopped critics of his rule from taking to the streets in days of protests calling for Saleh to step down, a line that few dissenters had previously dared to cross.

"We will not accept anything less than the president leaving," said independent parliamentarian Ahmed Hashid. "We'll only be happy when we hear the words 'I understand you' from the president," invoking a statement issued by Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali before he fled the country.

Nearly half of Yemen's population lives below the poverty line of $2 a day and doesn't have access to proper sanitation. Less than a tenth of the roads are paved. Tens of thousands have been displaced from their homes by conflict, flooding the cities.

The country is enduring a rebellion in the north and a secessionist movement in the south.

Saleh's current term in office expires in 2013 but proposed amendments to the constitution could let him remain in power for two additional terms of 10 years.

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Yemen follow Tunisia and Egypt's example : tens of thousands protesters on the streets against the government

ungovernable Autonome Staff Member Uploader Admin Team Experienced member