Southern Democratic Assembly - Police and government troops retired army officers' protests in Aden

The Associated Press
Published: August 2, 2007
ADEN, Yemen: Thousands of former army officers and soldiers protested Thursday in this port city, demanding to be allowed back in the military, clashing with security forces who fired tear gas and water cannons. One person was reported killed.

The street demonstrations underlined increasing tensions between southern and northern Yemen 13 years after a civil war. The protesters were largely members of the army of south Yemen who were ousted after being defeated by northern forces.
The protests began overnight when some demonstrators burned tires in the streets of Aden. Security forces clamped down with roadblocks on entrances into the city to prevent more protesters from coming in from other areas.
Violence erupted in the morning Thursday, when some 1,500 protesters marched toward the central square of downtown Aden. Riot police fired tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons to disperse them, an Associated Press reporter witnessed.
Hundreds of demonstrators clashed with police in other neighborhoods of the city.

At least three people were wounded, one of whom died later in Aden's Gomhouria Hospital, according to a doctor in the hospital, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
In a statement, the police denied any deaths among the protesters. The statement, carried on the state news agency Saba, blamed the incident on "law-breaking elements who entered from neighboring provinces seeking incitement and chaos."
About 1,000 people were arrested in Aden and other southern provinces, according to a police official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. Some have been released, but at least 600 believed to still be detained.
The protests were put down after about four hours. A military curfew was imposed in Aden, forcing shops to close. Thousands of government troops and police patrolled the streets.
But organizers of the protest threatened further demonstrations, complaining that the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh is ignoring complaints by southerners of discrimination at the hands of the northerner-dominated leadership.
North and South Yemen were united in 1990, with Saleh — who had been the north's president — remaining in his post. In 1994, rebels announced the sessession of the south, and battled northern forces for several months in a civil war that ended in their defeat.
Afterward, about 60,000 southern servicemen were discharged from the army, and many of them fled abroad. Most have since return, drawn back by an amnesty and promises that they would be allowed to re-enlist.
But many have not been allowed back into the military, which is dominated by northernerns. At the same time, southerners complain that they are kept out of government jobs — a main source of employment in the south — 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.
Eydarus Nasr, head of the parliament bloc of the Socialist Party, the former ruling party in the south, accused northerners of treating southern lands like "the spoils of war."
"The real cause for this situation is the foolishness of the authority and its misbehavior and its failure to deal with positively with the issues of the people," he said of Thursday's violence."
"Everything the government says is just a slogan, not real action. ... This is the result," he said.
Nasser Abdel Qawi, secretary general of the retired army officers association — a former brigadier general who now lives by selling sheeps and goats — said, "We will continue our peaceful protests, until the ruling regime solves our problems."