Yemen’s president yesterday called for dialogue instead of violence, in response to a wave of riots in the south of the impoverished country that have left dozens injured.
“Instead of demonstrations, burning tyres and cutting off roads, those who have a complaint or problem are welcome to parliament,” Ali Abdullah Saleh said in a speech to officials. “Tampering with national security is not acceptable.”
Youths demanding army jobs have rioted in several towns in the south of Yemen over the past 10 days.
There have been demands for the secession of the south, home to Yemen’s oil industry, and officials say they are concerned dissidents and secessionists are seeking to exploit the unrest.
The government and the army are among the main sources of employment in Yemen, one of the poorest countries outside Africa. More than half the workforce is in the agricultural sector and one diplomat estimated unemployment at 17 per cent.
About 42 per cent of Yemenis live in poverty, according to World Bank figures, particularly those in rural areas, where three-quarters of the country’s population reside.
Yemen’s per capita GDP was estimated at $ 723 in 2006, according to a US State Department report.
Yemeni Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Megawar said that 22 Yemeni soldiers had been hurt and 75 shops and government offices were damaged or looted in the unrest between March 30 and April 9. It was not clear how many civilians were hurt.
He said in a speech to officials that 283 people had been detained during the protests but 161 of them have been released.
Opposition politicians say the authorities have arrested several members of the Yemen Socialist Party, a Marxist group that ruled the south of the country until 1990 when north and south Yemen were unified.
Residents said that a handful of the protesters had carried banners demanding secession in protests last week.
Government forces crushed a southern bid to secede in 1994. Aden, the capital of the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, remained calm despite the violent protests in several towns in the nearby region.
The south is home to only a fifth of Yemen’s 22 million people but it generates much of its revenue. Up to 80 per cent of oil production comes from the area which also has fisheries and Aden’s port and refinery.
Meanwhile, an explosion rocked the Yemeni capital overnight near the offices of Canadian oil company Nexen, without causing any casualties, a security official said yesterday.
“An explosion took place (in the district of) Hadda, without causing any victims or damage,” a Yemeni official said, requesting anonymity.
It was the latest attack this year against Western targets in Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and one of the poorest countries on the planet.
The blast was heard just after midnight in Hadda, which is home to American oil workers whose residental complex was targeted by three mortar rounds on Sunday in an attack claimed by Al Qaeda.
Last month, Al Qaeda in Yemen claimed in an Internet statement to have targeted the US embassy in Sana’a in an attack in which a schoolgirl and a policeman were killed and 19 people were wounded.
Following the uptick in violence, the US embassy in Yemen said on Tuesday it had been ordered by the State Department to evacuate non-essential personnel and banned embassy staff from travelling outside Sana’a.