Title: In the name of unity
Description: "A grave human rights crisis in southern Yemen is ready to spill over into open conflict. In the context of growing tensions in southern Yemen, security services have killed dozens and wounded hundreds by firing without adequate cause or warning at unarmed demonstrators of the Southern Movement. Authorities have arbitrarily arrested thousands more. Southern Movement leaders and activists face charges of 'harming the unity of the state.'  North and South Yemen united in 1990, but fought a brief civil war in 1994 in which northern forces prevailed, later dismissing southern army officers and government officials. Their demands for increased pensions or reinstatement constituted the initial basis for the Southern Movement's peaceful public protests starting in 2007.  Since 2008, the movement has grown to include ordinary citizens demanding more jobs, less corruption, and a greater share of centrally controlled oil revenues. Now many southerners call for secession and restoration of an independent southern state. Most public protests have been peaceful, but in a handful of cases persons sympathetic to the Southern Movement's aims have attacked Yemeni security forces or civilians from the north living in the south.  This reports documents how the central government in San'a has hit back at largely peaceful protests with violent repression, mass arrests, and a frontal attack on the media, academics, and opinion-makers. In May 2009 authorities suspended eight newspapers; the largest, Al-Ayyam, remains suspended following an armed assault by the security forces on its Aden offices in which one person died. The report urges Yemen's government to end its unlawful use of lethal force and repression in the South, and to bring those responsible for serious human rights abuses to justice."--P. [4] of cover.
Subjects: Human rights, Demonstrations, Political violence, Political persecution, Right of Assembly
Places: Yemen (Republic)