WATCH THIS Yemen: A tale of two protests - People & Power - Al Jazeera EnglishAli Abdullah Saleh, the Yemeni president, has declared a nationwide state of emergency, after a violent crackdown on anti-government protests killed at least 41 people, and left scores more wounded, in the capital Sanaa. Saleh said on Friday that the decision to impose the state of emergency was made by the country's national security council, but there was no immediate indication of how long it would last. "The national security council announces a state of emergency across Yemen, and a curfew is set upon armed people in all Yemeni provinces. And the security forces with the army will take responsibility for stability," he said. He also expressed "sorrow for what happened today in university square". The Reuters news agency reported Saleh as saying that it was clear that there were "armed elements" amongst anti-government protesters, and that the clashes earlier in the day were between citizens and protesters, not protesters and security forces. At least 41 people were killed and scores wounded after the Yemeni security forces opened fire on protesters at University square, in the capital Sanaa. Security forces opened fire in attempts to prevent protesters from marching out of the square where they were gathered, sources said. Medical sources said the death toll was likely to rise. Pro-government "thugs" also opened fire on protesters from houses close to University square, witnesses told the AFP news agency. Muttahar al-Masri, the country's interior minister, put the death toll at 25, and said that a curfew was being imposed as part of the state of emergency. 'Hundreds' injured Friday's attack came as tens of thousands gathered across the country, continuing to demand that Saleh - the country's ruler of 32 years - step down. Al Jazeera correspondents in Sanaa reported that many protesters were shot in the head and neck; most of the injured were shot with live ammunition. Error processing SSI file Medics at a nearby medical centre told Al Jazeera almost 200 people were injured; many were in critical condition. One medic called the attack a "massacre". Anti-government demonstrations were also held in other cities including Taiz, Ibb, Hodeidah, Aden, and Amran following Muslim midday prayers on Friday. "They want to terrorise us, They want to drag us into a cycle of violence to make the revolution meaningless," said Jamal Anaam, an anti-government protester. "We were protesting peacefully and they shot at us. I won't leave this place until the president goes, even if I have to die," said another demonstrator, Ahmad, 25. "It is a massacre," said Mohammad al-Sabri, an opposition spokesman. "This is part of a criminal plan to kill off the protesters, and the president and his relatives are responsible for the bloodshed in Yemen today." Jamal al-Sharaabi, a photojournalist for the independent weekly al-Masdar was killed in the firing, becoming the first journalist confirmed to have been killed in Yemen since unrest began, the Committee to Protect Journalists said late on Friday. Opposition rejects talks The opposition says that there is no longer any possibility of talks with Saleh's government. "We condemn these crimes," said Yassin Noman, rotating president of Yemen's umbrella opposition group. "There is no longer any possibility of mutual understanding with this regime and he has no choice but to surrender authority to the people." Hissam Youssef, the chief of staff of the Arab League's secretary-general, told Al Jazeera that the body would be meeting to hold consultations on the latest violence in Yemen. "What is happening in Yemen is extremely disturbing and it is a source of deep concern ... We have a clear position in relation to how to deal with people who are demonstrating peacefully, since this is their right. And we also feel that governments have to respond positively to the demands that are being placed by the people in different places. "The situation in Yemen has been considered, but now the situation is escalating - we have asked for dialogue, we have asked for responding positively to the demands and concerns of the people, and we are continuing our consultations in this regard." Standing firm Ahead of the protests, hundreds of police patrolled the streets of Sanaa and elite forces set up fortifications around the presidential compound, ministries and the headquarters of Yemen's ruling party. Government forces have previously used live fire, rubber bullets, and tear gas on anti-regime rallies, in the government's increasingly violent crackdown on protests. Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula state neighbouring oil giant Saudi Arabia, has been hit by weeks of protests set in motion by uprisings in North Africa that toppled long-serving leaders in Tunisia and Egypt and spread to the Gulf states of Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia. Saleh has maintained a firm grip on power for over three decades and has scoffed at calls to step down, saying he will only do so when his current term of office expires in 2013. Despite violence and threats, anti-government protesters refuse to cease demonstrating until Saleh's ouster. Hashem Ahelbarra, Al Jazeera's Yemen correspondent, said that Saleh is now faced with a clear choice. "He basically has two options. To say 'dialogue', but then the people will ask him we need guarantees and you have to implement them now; if he says 'No, I'm holding out', then there's going to be bloodshed." Nabil Hasan al-Faqih, the country's tourism minister, resigned from both his post and membership of the ruling party late on Friday in protest against the killings. "I did it today. I resigned from the government and the People's General Congress," he told Reuters, adding that his decision was a result of "the events the country is going through". International condemnation Ahelbarra also said that there is little faith in the Arab League amongst Yemenis. "People in Yemen have no faith in the Arab League, they don't think that the Arab League can bring any solution to this crisis which is evolving now." In a statement on Friday, Barack Obama, the US president, condemned the violence in Yemen, saying that President Saleh should honour a pledge to allow peaceful demonstrations. He said that those responsible for Friday's violence "must be held accountable". Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said on Friday that the US wishes to see a "political solution" to the crisis. ""The United States is alarmed by today's violence in Sanaa against anti-government protesters and is seeking to verify reports that this is the result of actions by security forces," she said in a statement. "I am dismayed by the reports coming from Yemen. I have repeatedly and unreservedly condemned the use of violence against protesters in Sanaa and other cities, and the loss of life," she said in a statement. "Human rights and fundamental freedoms must be fully respected. President Saleh must stand by his commitments to uphold the right to peaceful protest, as he announced on 10 March. I ask him to stop violence now," she said. |
Gulf: Rising Shias, uneasy Sunnis
We excited by the jasmine revolution that has overthrown autocracies in Tunisia and Egypt, and may oust Muammar Gaddafi in Libya too. They hope that the jasmine revolution will spread to the rest of the Middle East, bringing some sort of democracy throughout the region. However, there is one huge difference between North Africa and the Persian Gulf. Tunisia, Egypt and Libya are all Sunni-majority states ruled by Sunni autocrats. But it may surprise readers to learn that the Persian Gulf coast is entirely a Shia majority area, much of which is ruled by Sunni autocrats. Hence popular revolts in the Gulf nations may or may not evolve into democracy, but will certainly evolve into Shia-cracy. This terrifies the Sunni rulers.
Arabs hate the term "Persian Gulf" and call that body of water the "Arabian Gulf." Yet the most appropriate name may be "Shia Gulf". The Shias in the north coast of the Gulf are Persian and those in the west and southern coasts are Arab, but all are Shia regardless.
Iran and Iraq are Shia-majority countries where Shias are in power. But in other Gulf countries, the Shia majority is ruled by Sunni sheikhs— in Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Even the Gulf coast of Saudi Arabia (which produces and exports most of its oil) has a Shia majority, although the country overall has a Sunni majority. The Saudi king has one big advantage over other Sunni rulers of the region: he is revered by all Muslims, Shia or Sunni, as the guardian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. This makes Saudi Arabia less vulnerable to a popular Shia revolt than Bahrain (where demonstrators are already choking the streets), Kuwait or the UAE. Yet the Saudis are paranoid because all their oil lies in the Shia-majority eastern region.
This is why the Saudi king has just announced that he will spend a whopping $ 11 billion on improving welfare and housing in the Shia-majority region. He wants to buy off potential revolutionaries. Whether he will succeed remains to be seen: Bahrain’s Shia demonstrators have refused to be bought off with grants of $ 2,250 per head. Some months ago, the WikiLeaks of US confidential diplomatic papers revealed that many Gulf sheikhdoms—including Bahrain and the UAE—wanted the US to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. The sheikhs claimed they feared armed invasion or bombing by Iran. In fact, their real fear is that a rising Iran will induce their own Shia subjects to revolt and demand democracy. The Sunni sheikhs have long cultivated the US to keep Iran at bay. But this simply induces disgust on the part of many Shia subjects, who view their rulers as not just Sunni oppressors but American stooges too. Bahrain is a small island off the Saudi Gulf coast, linked to it by a motorable causeway. Whereas Saudi Arabia is an ultra-conservative Muslim state where women must wear burqas and are not even allowed to drive cars, Bahrain is a freewheeling, westernized state where women can wear short skirts and dance all night in nightclubs. It has an elected lower house, but real power vests with the king. The democracy movement in Bahrain started off as a secular one, yet inevitably became coloured by the Shia-Sunni split.
Some analysts hope for a peaceful transition from autocracy to democracy in the Middle East. Muslim autocrats have sometimes evolved into leaders of political parties in democracies. Two examples are Gen Zia-ur Rahman in Bangladesh and Gen Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan. It is just possible that some such transition could occur in North Africa too. But this will be impossible in the Gulf, since any political party formed by the Sunni rulers will be thrashed by Shia rivals. Hence Gulf sheikhdoms are more likely to opt for the Gaddafi path of bloody suppression than the Mubarak path of exiting in favour of democracy.
This creates a moral and financial dilemma for the US. It swears in theory by democracy, but in practice dreads the replacement of Sunni sheikhs by Shia-cracies in the Gulf. It also fears that Shia revolts in the Gulf may disrupt oil supplies and send prices soaring, above all if the democracy fever spreads to Saudi Arabia.
Iran loves the thought of a completely Shia Gulf. But it also fears that its own theocracy could be toppled by a democracy movement, and that tempers its enthusiasm for the jasmine revolution. When democracy seems inconvenient to so many powerful forces, its prospects in the Gulf cannot be too bright. Its prospects in North Africa are much brighter.
Yemeni government snipers firing from rooftops and houses shot into a crowd of tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Friday, killing at least 40 people and injuring hundreds demanding the ouster of the autocratic president.
The protest in the central square was the largest yet in the popular uprising that began a month ago – and the harsh government response marked a new level of brutality from the security forces of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a key – if uneasy – ally in the U.S. campaign against al-Qaida who has ruled Yemen for 30 years. Saleh declared a nationwide state of emergency hours after the shootings in the capital, formally giving the security forces a freer hand to confront the demonstrators. There was no word on how long the emergency laws would remain in place.
Dozens of enraged protesters stormed several buildings that were the source of the gunfire, detaining 10 people including paid thugs who they said would be handed over to judicial authorities.
Demonstrators have camped out in squares across Yemen for over a month to demand that Saleh leave office. Security forces and pro-government thugs have used live fire, rubber bullets, tear gas, sticks, knives and rocks to suppress them. The protesters say they won't go until Saleh does.
"They want to scare and terrorize us. They want to drag us into a cycle of violence – to make the revolution meaningless," said Jamal Anaam, a 40-year-old activist camping out in the square that the protesters call "Taghyir Square" – Arabic for "Change."
"They want to repeat the Libyan experiment, but we refuse to be dragged into violence no matter what the price," he said.
Before the shooting Friday in Sanaa, a military helicopter flew low over the square as protesters arrived from prayers. Gunfire soon erupted from rooftops and houses above the demonstrators, where witnesses said beige-clad elite forces and plainclothes security officials took aim.
A state TV report denied government forces were behind the gunfire.
Police used burning tires and gasoline to make a wall of fire that blocked demonstrators from fleeing down a main road leading to sensitive locations, including the president's residence.
Panic and chaos swept the square, where dozens of dead and wounded sprawled on the ground. Witnesses said the snipers aimed at heads, chests and necks. Protesters carried their friends, scarves pressed over bleeding wounds.
"It is a massacre," said Mohammad al-Sabri, an opposition spokesman. "This is part of a criminal plan to kill off the protesters, and the president and his relatives are responsible for the bloodshed in Yemen today."
Saleh announced a press conference later Friday. Opposition groups also planned an emergency meeting to discuss their next steps.
Before the protests, Yemeni elite forces fortified the president's residence, the Interior Ministry, the Defense Ministry and the building housing the ruling party, apparently fearing demonstrators would storm those areas, as they have done elsewhere in uprisings across the Middle East.
Doctors at the makeshift field hospital near the protest camp at Sanaa University confirmed at least 40 dead, three of them children. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Interior Minister Gen. Mouthar al-Masri, who is in charge of internal security forces, put the number of dead at 25 and the injured at 200.
Medical officials and witnesses say hundreds were wounded in Friday's violence, which marks a dramatic escalation of the crisis that has engulfed Yemen.
The protests are just one of the problems in this extremely poor, tribal country. Saleh's weak central government also faces one of the world's most active al-Qaida branches, a secessionist rebellion in the south and a Shiite uprising in the north.
__Conditions that will dominate future discourse: Promoting democratic reforms in Egypt and throughout the Arab world is critical under any circumstances and no effort should be spared by the indigenous people-in partnership with their governments whenever possible-to bring about political reforms consistent with their aspirations. Foreign governments and human rights organizations can and should provide assistance only as requested, bearing in mind three critical requirements to lasting reforms: Since the governance and traditions of each Arab state differ, there is no single template of political reforms applicable to all. Rapid reforms without transitional periods to allow for the development of civil society and secular political parties could lead to further destabilization. And finally, political reforms are not sustainable-and might even backfire-unless they are concurrently accompanied by substantial economic development programs that can provide immediate benefits.
No single template for reforms, but many common denominators: The breathtaking developments in the Arab world seem to have taken many parties by surprise, and speculations about how the Middle East will look in the future run the gamut. There are those who argue that revolutions against dictatorships, even when they succeed, do not guarantee lasting democratic political reforms-many former Soviet Republics (especially those with Islamic roots) offer glaring examples, such Turkmenistan under President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, Uzbekistan under President Islam Karimov, or Tajikistan under President Emomali Rahmon. These and others have become a one-man rule, stifling political freedom while often applying ruthless methods to maintain their grip on power. Others contend that regardless of how the events unfold, the Arab world will continue to undergo transformational changes of historic proportions, and that Arab governments have no choice but to heed their public's yearning for greater freedoms. And then there are those who assert that any reforms the Arab regimes are ultimately willing to undertake will be superficial, varying in degree and duration, and designed to pacify the revolutionaries. They insist that entrenched constituencies such as the military and Islamic organizations in the region remain determined to shape events according to their political agendas, and that the only certainty about the future is, in fact, uncertainty.
These arguments and others bear a degree of cogency that cannot readily be dismissed. That said, there are certain conditions created by the uprisings that will remain constant and will impact each Arab country differently. Moreover, regardless of how firm their grip on power may be today, no Arab government will be immune to some degree of meaningful change. But the sooner they understand the potency and long-lasting implications of these new conditions, the less blood will be shed and the smoother and more peaceful the transitional period will be.
Those who never expected Arab youth to rise against their authoritarian governments were proven wrong. The Arab youth of today is not the same youth of a generation ago. This new generation has been exposed to the world at large; they have risen against oppression, deprivation and stagnation, and they no longer want to live in submission to corrupt leaders and governments. To assume that Arab youth will indefinitely remain subjugated to them is nothing short of an insult to a people who have contributed so much to civilization and enlightenment. No Arab government, however oppressive, will ever be in a position to completely shut down their youth's access to the outside world and stifle their yearning for freedom. Regardless of how youth uprisings fluctuate in intensity, they are not a passing phenomenon. They will last for years and wind down only when Arab regimes commit to and deliver on promises for constructive and permanent political and economic reforms regardless of how long that might take.
The current Arab regimes must also remember that the youth uprisings are an indigenous movement; they were neither instigated by outside powers or groups, as some Arab leaders alluded, nor did the revolutionaries need to blame outside entities for their plight. The youth have pointed their fingers at the failure of their own governments. The revolting youth refuse to be distracted by the old empty slogans and contrived excuses that suggest chaos will dominate in the absence of the current leaders should they be ousted from power. Gone are the days when Arab leaders could ride the storm of public discontent by blaming Israel or the United States or former colonial powers for their trying existence. The people want their leaders to focus instead on addressing their grievances in earnest and not look for scapegoats, which brought more deprivation and despair to their people.
In addition, the Arab uprising still represents only the beginning of a continuing wave of instability that is sweeping the region and will not subside by temporary economic measures. The latest example is Saudi Arabian King Abdullah's $37 billion welfare package for Saudi citizens and a 15 percent raise for government employees. Another is the Bahraini government's payment in the sum of $2,650 to each family to buy their compliance and silence. These are examples of an unsustainable approach governments take in their effort to quell public demands for greater freedom and social equality. The Arab regimes must realize that the public does not want handouts, they want a voice. They want to be heard, because they have the inherent right to be heard. They want to live in dignity and will undoubtedly refuse to settle for their government's recent reactionary display of pursuing social justice.
There is no cure-all that will fit the needs for change in different Arab states. Monarchs and Emirs, the rulers of the Gulf States, Jordan and Morocco will undoubtedly face serious challenges, but in the end-however many years that might take-they will be forced to accept, or will evolve toward (through expanded and successful democratic sustainable development programs), a constitutional monarchy, or a more highly democratic one. Other countries like Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt may have to choose a republican form of government with powerful elected legislators led by a prime minister, with a strong military behind the scenes to guard against abuses of power. Still others like Libya, Yemen and Sudan may end up dominated by a military clique for a number of years in an effort to reconcile different tribal demands while promoting some political and economic reforms. Syria may succeed to head-off youth uprisings by initiating some political and economic reforms. Lebanon will remain a sectarian tinderbox; while the Palestinians will be emboldened to rise up in an effort to end the Israeli occupation, use international forums to bring pressure to bear on Israel, and build a more self-reliant economy (an important premise in the Fayyad Plan). Generally speaking, the transition in the Arab monarchies will be more peaceful than in other Arab states, but most will experience various degrees of violence. Regardless of the kind of government many Arab states will end up with, adherence to basic human rights and the removal of all emergency laws will be central to a more peaceful transition. No Arab government will be exempt from these requirements.
The Arab world will continue to undergo transformational changes of historic proportions led by determined youth committed to liberate themselves from the shackles of poverty. Every Arab regime must either heed their public's yearning for greater freedoms and economic developments, or likely be fundamentally challenged. Egypt offers a microcosm of the changes that have occurred and the kind of reforms that must be pursued. How the revolution in Egypt further evolves will have a direct and indirect impact on the rest of the Arab states, as Egypt has traditionally been-and will continue to be-the leader of the Arab world._.
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