|
Massive
protest in south Yemen
By Jane
NovakMarch 27, 2008 7:34 AM
A rally
in the southern Yemeni governorate of Dhalie on Monday drew several
hundred thousand protesters from the governorates of Hadramout, Aden,
Abyan, and Shabwa. Some estimates put the crowd at more than a half
million.
The
speeches included calls for “southern liberation” from the northern
dominated regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Thousands of the
orange flags of the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY)
were openly flown. A statement issued by the rally’s organizers blamed
Saleh’s regime for undermining national unity, demanded the return of
plundered land, and called for an international investigation into
political murders and arbitrary detention practiced against southerners.
Protests
have gathered steam in the southern Yemeni governorates since they began
a year ago. The movement was started by former southern military
officers who were punitively discharged after Yemen’s 1994 civil war on
below sustenance pensions; more than 100,000 civil and military workers
lost their livelihoods following the war. Protesters’ grievances also
include widespread land theft by influential northerners, employment
discrimination, exclusion from the political process, and omnipresent
military camps and checkpoints.
The
demonstrations adopted an increasingly separatist tone as the Yemeni
regime reacted to the mounting civil unrest with increased repression
and cosmetic gestures that failed to address the underlying issues.
Since August, 17 protesters were killed by security forces. Hundreds
were arrested. Reinstated southern military officers were forced to sign
pledges to refrain from all political activity. The regime blocked
Internet access to news sites, blogs, and YemenPortal.org, a
Yemen-specific news aggregator. Many editors and journalists have been
assaulted. Gunmen attacked the offices of al Ayyam, a popular
independent newspaper in the South, and one person was killed.
At a
February 2008 meeting in Dubai, leading southern Yemeni personalities,
sultans, and sheiks proposed a constitutional monarchy in the former
PDRY. A national rescue plan issued by the southern opposition had been
entirely dismissed by Saleh’s regime months earlier.
Tensions
arose shortly after the hurried unification in 1990 of the southern PDRY
and the northern Yemeni Arab Republic (YAR); the official name today is
the Republic of Yemen. The Document of Pledge and Accord signed in
Jordan in February 1994 was an effort to avert civil war.
The
document called for the expulsion of foreign terrorists and the trial of
those terrorists who committed crimes (against southern personalities).
Local rule was to be enhanced and the official media depoliticized.
Another requirement was the removal of military checkpoints in the South
and the pull back of military forces. The document envisioned the
reorganization of the Yemeni military as a politically neutral national
defense force. Yet, the articles of the document were never implemented.
In May
1994, the southern PDRY declared succession. President Saleh’s northern
forces included a substantial number of Afghan Arabs and Islamic
extremists. Aden, the capital of the former PDRY, was extensively
bombed. The UN security council issued declarations 924 and 931 calling
for a cease-fire. Saleh’s forces won the civil war in July 1994, and
unity was reimposed militarily on the South.
After
the defeat of the southern forces, Saleh consolidated his power with a
series of constitutional amendments, alliances with terror groups,
control of the state media, and by installing his relatives as the heads
of the military branches and security forces. The northern elite’s
hegemony was a “red line,” undiscussable for more than a decade.
Resentment and humiliation festered and now threaten to explode in the
southern governorates, where over the last year, the Yemeni regime has
been gradually losing control.
Currently, there is a strain of southern sentiment that maintains the
PDRY was not unified with the North, but rather was illegally occupied
by Saleh’s forces following the civil war. Undeniably, the former states
never reconciled as equal partners and development of a pluralistic
system was arrested. Tribal relations became the basis for the evolving
concentration of political, economic, and military power. For example,
the current governor of Aden has been implicated in numerous land
scandals.
Most of
the southern protesters would be satisfied with a national system that
established equality and dispensed justice. But pluralism is anathema to
Saleh’s brand of tribal elitism, and northern citizens are just as
effectively excluded from the political system as their southern
brothers. Parliamentary elections are due in 2009, and the voter rolls
inflated and inaccurate. The regime refuses to discuss proportional
representation as advocated by the opposition coalition, the Joint
Meeting Parties, and the make up of the Electoral Commission remains
unclear. |
