Alert: Three Protesters Killed by Yemeni Security Forces
Three killed and ten injured in South Yemen
Dispatch from Yemen, Saturday, October 13, 2007
A large demonstration is scheduled for tomorrow in South Yemen, where protests have been growing since May 2007. Today Yemen’s Central Security Forces descended on the podium that is the designated location for the demonstration and opened fire on protesters who had gathered in advance. The public gathering is being held to commemorate the revolution of October 14 in the city of Alhabaylin in Rdvan.
The security forces tried to evict citizens from the podium where the protesters had been having a sit-in for more than a week, but the protesters refused to leave their places. The security forces opened fire into the crowd, killing three and wounding ten. Some are in a critical condition.
The massive demonstration scheduled for tomorrow is in protest of the Yemeni regime’s brutal and institutionalized discrimination against residents of the former South Yemen after the 1994 civil war. The military has been deployed in advance of the protests including a number of tanks.
Names of the people who were killed:
Shafiq Haitham Hassan
Mohammed Nasser Haitham Alhalmi
Abdel Nasser Kassem Hamadi,
The wounded are:
Thabet Nasser Mohammed
Haitham Mohamed Saleh
Haitham Mohamed Cmsan
Said Muthanna Naji
Gran Nasser Mohammed
Saad Nasser Nasser
Thabet Mohamed Dkic
Saad stable future
Zaid Abdul Illah Muzahim
Fahmi Mohammed Hussein
Muhammad Ahmad Khomeini
Hussein Bin Hussein
Abdel Bari firm
Mohsen Abdel-Hamid Rajeh
Atef Haitham Nasser
RADFAN, Yemen—Riot police opened fire into a crowd of retired army officers Saturday, killing four people, activists and local medical officials said.
Hundreds of protesters gathered in the southern city of Radfan, about 185 miles south of the capital Sana’a, to prepare for a rally scheduled for Sunday to mark the 44th anniversary of southern Yemen’s uprising against British occupation.The protesters were largely former soldiers who fought on the side of the breakaway south in a 1994 civil war.
North and South Yemen were united in 1990 under President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been the north’s president. In 1994, rebels announced the secession of the south, and battled northern forces for several months in a civil war that ended in their defeat.
The protesters were gathering to plan their own rally, which had been banned by the government on the grounds it would challenge an official event, according to an opposition leader who spoke on condition of anonymity fearing government reprisal.
The Yemeni government deployed more than 1,000 police and members of the security forces and sealed off several roads heading to Radfan, in an effort to prevent more people from joining the rally.
A scuffle broke out between some protesters and riot police, who then opened fire and killed four people and injured at least eight, according to the opposition leader.
The casualty figure was confirmed by a local hospital official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Southerners complain that they are kept out of government jobs, in favor of northerners brought in to fill the bureaucracy and security forces. Northerners also continue to hold large tracts of land in the south granted to them after the civil war.
