The Malaysian Insider :: World |
| Yemeni police fire on protest, 65 hurt Posted: 08 Mar 2011 05:11 PM PST  Women attend a rally to demand the ouster of Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh outside Sanaa University March 8, 2011. The sign reads ''Leave!''. — Reuters pic Six of the wounded were in a serious condition, they said. Policemen and security agents in civilian clothes opened fire as they tried to prevent people from joining thousands of protesters who have camped out for weeks in front of Sanaa University, witnesses told Reuters earlier. The state news agency Saba blamed the shooting on gunmen linked to a tribal leader and said three demonstrators and three policemen were injured. It said police were hunting the gunmen. Earlier police brought out water cannon and placed concrete blocks around Sanaa University, after weeks of fierce clashes across the country between government loyalists and protesters that killed at least 27 people. Around 10,000 protesters marched in the city of Dhamar, 60 km (40 miles) south of Sanaa, residents said by telephone. Dhamar is known for ties to Saleh and is the hometown of Yemen's prime minister, interior minister and head judge. "Leave! leave!" the protesters shouted in Dhamar, two days after Saleh loyalists there held a similar-sized rally. Protesters pelted a municipal official with rocks. Burgeoning protests fuelled by anger over poverty and corruption, and a series of defections from Saleh's political and tribal allies, have added pressure on him to step aside this year even as he pledges to stay on until his term ends in 2013. "Across the board, what you're seeing is that more and more people are really starting to crystallize around this single call for the president to step down," Princeton University Yemen scholar Gregory Johnsen said. Yemen, neighbour to oil giant Saudi Arabia, was teetering on the brink of failed statehood even before recent protests. Saleh has struggled to cement a truce with Shi'ite Muslim rebels in the north and curb secessionist rebellion in the south, all the while fighting al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing. MINISTER BLAMES POOR ECONOMY Analysts say protests may be reaching a point where it will be difficult for Saleh to cling to power. In what could add to popular anger, two Yemeni rights groups said two prisoners had died after security forces on Monday used live ammunition and tear gas to halt a prison riot in Sanaa. Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi blamed growing protests on poor economic conditions. Some 40 percent of Yemen's 23 million people live on US$2 (RM6) a day or less and a third face chronic hunger. Qirbi said he wanted foreign donors to inject up to US$6 billion to fill a five-year budget gap. "What we need is really development and economic growth because the present political crisis is really as a result of the economic situation in Yemen," he said at a Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers' meeting in Abu Dhabi on Monday. Protesters are demanding greater participation in a government largely led by Saleh's closest allies. They say they are frustrated by rampant corruption and soaring unemployment, which is at 35 percent or higher. Princeton's Johnsen said calls for foreign aid were a tactical move by Saleh to buy time to divide the protesters. "Yemen wants more money to come in and Saleh wants to try and fragment the protesters as much as he can. President Saleh is trying to string this out as long as possible in the hopes he can pit different interest groups against one another," he said. — Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
| Iran’s Rafsanjani ousted as head of state body Posted: 08 Mar 2011 04:26 PM PST  Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani gives the opening speech during Iran's Assembly of Experts' biannual meeting in Tehran March 8, 2011. — Reuters pic The defeat for one of the great survivors of Iranian politics since the 1979 Islamic revolution highlighted how even establishment opponents of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are being isolated and sidelined. It follows reports by relatives of reformist opposition leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, denied by the government, that they have been placed in detention at a secret location to stop them orchestrating pro-reform protests inspired by uprisings in the Arab world. Security forces fired teargas to disperse anti-government protesters in Tehran yesterday, Mousavi's website said. An ambush challenge by arch hard-liner Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi-Kani forced Rafsanjani to withdraw from running for re-election as chairman of the Assembly of Experts. The 86-member clerical body has the authority to dismiss Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 71, but it has never exercised that power since it was established in 1983. It also appoints the new leader if the old one is removed or dies. The vote will not have an immediate practical impact on Iran's complex political structure but analysts said the hardline triumph at the Assembly would further homogenize the establishment by removing another channel for dissent. "In the short-term Ahmadinejad has scored a victory in terms of his immediate authority within the establishment, but it raises questions for those beyond Rafsanjani who may have questions about that authority," said Professor Scott Lucas, academic and editor of the online journal EA WorldView. "It is a question of who's next?" Rafsanjani, who had chaired the Assembly since 2007, said he had no intention of causing friction at a time when "discord is becoming very serious" in the Islamic state. "I regard division at the Assembly as detrimental ... I had said before that should he (Mahdavi-Kani) stand for the position, I would withdraw to prevent any rift," Rafsanjani told the Assembly in a speech, the students news agency ISNA said. Iranian media said last week that more than 50 Assembly members supported Mahdavi-Kani's candidacy, but the challenger was coy up to the last minute over whether he would run. The defeat was a blow to Rafsanjani's attempt to play a bridging role between dominant Islamic hardliners and the increasingly marginalized reformist opposition since Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election in 2009. "THE AGILE CLERIC" The 2009 vote, which authorities denied rigging as the opposition claimed, jolted Iran with the biggest anti-government street unrest in the past three decades, creating a deepening rift within the Islamic elites. "There are some (officials) who want to monopolize the leadership ... but it is a major mistake as the supreme leader is above factional politics," said Rafsanjani, in a clear reference to Ahmadinejad and his supporters. "Ethics have been harmed in society and lies propagate from the level of top officials." Rafsanjani's political power has been declining since he lost to Ahmadinejad in a 2005 presidential bid and criticised the government's crackdown on the opposition in 2009. The cleric has faced persistent accusations of corruption and his family has been harassed. His daughter Faezeh, a former lawmaker and a women's rights activist, was briefly detained on a banned rally on February 14, the first street unrest since December 2009 that was crushed by the elite Revolutionary Guards. His son, Mohsen, resigned as the head of Tehran Metro Company on Friday, citing lack of financial support from the government. Another son, Mehdi, faces arrest if he ever returns to Iran on accusations of fomenting unrest in 2009. Rafsanjani still heads the Expediency Council, an unelected arbitration body that resolves disputes between parliament and a clerical vetting body, the Guardian Council. Some analysts still believe the agile cleric may still bounce back by using residual influence in some layers of the Revolutionary Guards and among top clerics, who see him as a pillar of the Islamic revolution able to defuse crisis. Rafsanjani, with a political career spanning more than half a century, has held most of the top positions in Iran's political structure including parliament speaker, armed forces commander and president from 1989 to 1997. He has also been at the heart of almost every key moment in the 32-year-old Islamic republic's life, including decisions to prolong and then end the 1980-1988 war with Iraq, as well as covert arms-for-hostages deals with Washington in the 1980s. — Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
| You are subscribed to email updates from The Malaysian Insider :: World To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
Tiada ulasan:
Catat Ulasan