Middle East

Massacres continue as Syrians fight for freedom

By Dan Katz A series of reports have come through Syrian opposition groups suggesting that the regime has massacred scores of soldiers attempting to defect and flee to neighbouring Turkey. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in London, told the BBC on 21 December that at least 111 had been killed in an "”organised massacre” in Idlib province in north west Syria. Defectors were machine gunned. Survivors were then hunted down and killed, together with civilians who were sheltering them. One Lebanese-based activist from the campaign Avaaz suggests that up to 3000 defectors are in the...

Bil’in arrest highlights Israeli intimidation in Palestinian villages

By Hamde abu Rahma and Rosie Huzzard On Friday 16 December, Mohammed al-Khatib, the 36 year old leading member of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlement Construction in Bil’in, West Bank, Palestine, was arrested during a non-violent demonstration in Nabi Salih village. The demonstration was held to mark a week since the killing of Mustafa Tamimi, who was attacked by the IDF a week beforehand, by a tear gas canister shot to the head by an Israeli soldier. Mohammed was arrested along with thirty activists from the demonstration, most of them Israeli and internationals, and he was...

Yemen: Saleh staggers on

Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh is resisting calls for him to step down, as the mass pro-democracy movement in the capital, Sanaa, continues to mobilise against him. Protests began in January, and since then hundreds have been killed and many more injured. However power is also contested in the capital by rival sections of the elite. In March several senior army commanders defected, and tribal militias fought the President’s forces in May and June. Salah was badly injured by shell fire in June and left for treatment in Saudi Arabia for several months. But now he is back. The struggle has...

1968, 1989...2011? Is this a year of global revolt?

“Perhaps”, wrote a columnist in the staid Financial Times on 30 August, “2011 will come to rank alongside 1968 and 1989 as a year of global revolt”. The columnist cites North Africa and the Middle East (including Israel), but also Chile, China, Greece... If Britain does not look like that yet, maybe it is just that this country is a backwater, and needs to catch up. Capitalist crisis has shaken people up. “Ordinary citizens who feel excluded” have stirred against “an internationally connected elite”. In reaction to decades of top-level talk of “greed is good” and being “intensely relaxed about...

Chaos grips Yemen

Yemen — even given the best possible of governments — would not be a well functioning state. And Yemen has not got the best of all possible governments. It has the corrupt rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh, in power for over 40 years, and unwilling to let go. President Saleh has not been seen in public since he was wounded on June 3, in an attack on his palace which left him with burns and shrapnel wounds. He left the country to be treated in Saudi Arabia, declaring he would soon be back. Saleh had just backed away from an attempt to negotiate a transition of power with the coalition which has led...

Three dictators wobble, but don't yet fall

On Saturday 4 June, one of the three remaining Arab despots confronting mass rebellions — Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen — seemed to concede defeat, fleeing to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment. It was reported that 35 top officials had fled with him. Tens of thousands celebrated in the capital, Sanaa, on Sunday 5 June. But on Monday 6 June, Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, deputising for Saleh, refused to meet the opposition parties to discuss a transfer of power. He said Saleh would soon return, and there could be no talks until then. The USA and the EU are urging Saleh to step down. If Saleh digs in...

Middle East news in brief

The Rafah crossing, the only entry point to Gaza not controlled by Israel, was opened by Egypt on 28 May. The opening will mean a great deal to the people of Gaza. A Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions activist and socialist based in Nablus, in the West Bank, told Solidarity: “The opening of the border represents the end of the siege, and proof that the corrupt Arab dictatorships were partners in this siege. “Meanwhile, the recent Palestinian protests on Israel’s borders were part of the non-violent resistance and revolution across the Arab world.” Meanwhile the Damascus-based Hamas...

Yemen: half way to hell

The main political lines in the four-month-old mobilisations to oust President Ali Abdullah Saleh are becoming blurred. The opposition front which has led protests in the capital, Sanaa, demanding Saleh steps down, is led by secular leftists, Baathists, Nasserites and Islamists. Saleh is too weak to use the kind of systematic violence currently employed by the Syrian regime, but his forces have resorted to bursts of killing — splintering his support and hardening the resolve of the young protesters. Yemen’s neighbours have become increasingly alarmed at the chaos on their borders, and have...

A view of Bahrain

People in Bahrain are expecting the worst every moment. The military crackdown on protesters led by Saudi troops has unleashed an ugly racist face. Bahrain was always a liberal country and the ruling regime itself is a secular tribe. But as a tribe, it had a problem with equality and justice. Other citizens, not in tribes, found themselves lost as they were treated as second or third class citizens. The ruling regime has always monopolised the nation’s natural resources and wealth — citizens who founded Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) and other companies found themselves deprived of their...

Syria: democracy protests spread

Pro-democracy protests have spread to the Syrian capital, Damascus. On Friday at least 15 people were shot dead in Douma, a satellite of Damascus. On Saturday, Syrian security forces arrested dozens of people, mostly in Deraa and Douma. Those that have been arrested have been brutalised and tortured. On Sunday. thousands marched in Douma as eight of those gunned down were buried. The crowd chanted “Down with the regime!” Hafez Assad ran Syria as a one-party police state from 1971 until 2000. The current President, Bashar Assad, has ruled in a similar way since his father’s death. Posters and...

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