I manifestanti aumentano la pressione in Yemen/ La polizia del Bahrain attacca i manifestanti – Testimoni raccont

– La decisione del governo del Bahrain di cacciare con la forza i manifestanti segna un punto di svolta nelle rivolte nordafricane e mediorientali. Il regime egiziano non era riuscito a farlo, per la divisione tra polizia e militari, che hanno consentito continuasse l’occupazione della piazza Tahrir.

– Violente le repressioni anche in Iran e Yemen ma nessun governo aveva finora sgomberato con la forza la base di una manifestazione di massa.

– I manifestanti chiedono ora anche la destituzione della famiglia reale, e gridano di “a morte gli al-Khalifa”;

o   In Bahrain, con una popolazione a maggioranza sciita, sarebbe a rischio la minoranza sunnita al potere in caso di scontri settari.

o   Molti sciiti del Bahrain stanno manifestando contro la discriminazione politica ed economica dei sunniti al potere.

o   La maggior parte dei partecipanti alle proteste sono sciiti e poveri, anche se vi hanno aderito professionisti sciiti e alcuni sunniti.

o   Il movimento non sarebbe legato all’Iran, ma una sollevazione sciita nel Bahrain allarmerebbe i governanti sunniti in Arabia Saudita ed Emirati, che hanno forti minoranze sciite.

o   Le rivolte in Egitto, Tunisia ecc. non sono state segnate da questa caratteristica.

o   Dopo che questa settimana le proteste avevano compreso un vasto arco dell’opposizione, mercoledì sette diversi  gruppi di opposizione, tra i quali esponenti politici sia sciiti che sunniti e il maggiore blocco sciita Al-Wafaq, hanno formato un comitato per coordinare le proteste e unificare le rivendicazioni, che vanno dalla destituzione della famiglia reale alle sole riforme politiche, mantenendo al potere re al-Khalifa; obiettivo del comitato un movimento di unità nazionale.

o   Il comitato ha annunciato per sabato una manifestazione di massa, previsti almeno 50mila partecipanti, un numero alto su una popolazione complessiva di circa 800mila.

– Dai racconti degli scontri in Pearl Square, rondò stradale del distretto finanziario della capitale, Manama, dove ci sarebbero stati 5-10mila manifestanti, di primissimo mattino al terzo giorno di proteste:

o   La polizia (a centinaia) ha attaccato tutti da tutti i lati, l’unica via di uscita era in direzione dell’ospedale. Due le vittime, di 23 e 62 anni, oltre un centinaio i feriti secondo i dipendenti dell’ospedale.

o   All’alba la piazza era ormai vuota e chiusa con filo spinato, centinaia ancora tenuti fuori dall’Ospedale.

– I partiti di opposizione in Yemen, relativamente forti, hanno mobilitato decine di migliaia di manifestanti nella capitale San’a, e poi sembra abbiano perso il controllo di quelle delle proteste contro il presidente Ali Abdullah Saleh,

[1] in carica da oltre 30 anni. Per diversi giorni di seguito, studenti e giovani attivisti senza partito hanno manifestato nelle strade della capitale. Mercoledì anche ad Aden le prime due vittime, delle forze di sicurezza che cercava di sgomberare i manifestanti.

– Sia il governo al potere che rappresentanti dei partiti di opposizione (che chiedono riforme politiche e liberalizzazioni economica e la cui base è legata alle stesse tribù del partito di Saleh) temono che le proteste siano organizzate al di fuori dei partiti costituiti:

o   in  due manifestazioni organizzate ad inizio mese dai due partiti di opposizione, c’erano molti partecipanti non legati ai partiti;

o   in caso di vuoto di potere avvertono del rischio che entrino in scena tribù fortemente armate.

Irak, circa 1500 manifestanti a Kut, provincia di Wassit a sud di Baghdad, chiedono migliori servizi pubblici, incendiato un edificio pubblico 50 i feriti negli scontro con la polizia

Bahrain Police Storm Protests – Witnesses Say Forces Fired Tear Gas and Rubber Bullets on Crowds, Killing at Least Two People

–   MANAMA, Bahrain—Riot police firing tear gas and rubber bullets stormed a public square occupied by antigovernment protests early Thursday in Bahrain, driving out demonstrators and killing at least two people, witnesses and hospital officials said, in a drastic turn in the protests swelling across the Arabian Peninsula and the broader Middle East.

Security forces in Manama, the capital of the tiny island kingdom, sealed off every entrance to Pearl Square, then entered the camp from four directions at about 3 a.m., firing tear gas indiscriminately, trampling tents and ripping banners, witnesses said. After police regained control of the square, they continued to chase protesters through side streets.

A succession of rallies and demonstrations, in Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Algeria, Bahrain and Iran have been inspired directly by the popular outpouring of anger that toppled Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. See how these uprisings have progressed.

At Salmanyah Hospital, hundreds of angry protesters gathered at the emergency wing, forming a cordon through which the injured were wheeled on trolleys and chanting "death to the al-Khalifa," in reference to the royal family, but the protesters also chanted "peaceful, peaceful" in English, in an apparent sign that they would not respond violently.

–   The decision by authorities to sweep out the protesters by force was significant because it was the move Egypt’s regime never succeeded in making to regain control.

–   In Cairo, police and gangs associated with the government attacked protesters, but the military ultimately preserved civil order by guarding the protesters’ ability to occupy Tahrir Square. There have been violent putdowns of protests in Iran and elsewhere in recent days, but no government has forcibly swept out an established base of mass demonstrations.

–   In Bahrain, security forces had used tear gas and rubber bullets at close range to forcibly subdue protesters from the beginning, but had not attacked Pearl Square since demonstrators took up residence there. On Tuesday, though President Barack Obama declined to comment on Bahrain when asked, the State Department asked for both the opposition and the regime to refrain from violence.

–   The crackdown also came as a surprise after King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa had made a rare television appearance on Tuesday promising to investigate the deaths of two protesters said to have been killed by security forces in the melees. But as the protests have grown larger, they also have included more calls for the ruling family’s removal, and the shouts of "Death to the al-Khalifa," have increasingly been heard.

–   Fears have also grown within Bahrain and among its Persian Gulf neighbors that the Shiite-majority country would be at risk of widespread sectarian violence if the regime became more unstable. That hasn’t marked the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere, but Bahrain is governed by a Sunni minority and such tensions have simmered and sometimes boiled over violently before the recent unrest.

Friends and relatives of the injured filed in and out of Salmanyah Hospital’s critical room, many wailing or slumping against the hospital walls. Others showed photos on camera phones they said were taken in the square, with some photos showing tanks, suggesting the military had joined the crackdown. Many other wounded were being taken to Ibn Al-Nafees Hospital, a private hospital a few miles away.

–   Riot police and protesters faced off this week in Bahrain’s capital city. Many of the island’s Shiite majority are demonstrating against perceived political and economic discrimination from the kingdom’s Sunni rulers. WSJ’s Joe Parkinson reports.

–   "The police started hitting everyone from every side," said a medical professional who declined to be named. "People had only one way to run, which was towards this hospital. There was one girl, she was a paramedic, carrying a baby and they hit her; I saw that."

Salmanyah Hospital officials said the two dead men, one 23 years old and the other 62, had been shot at close range with buck shot, a projectile containing hundreds of ball bearings. Hospital officials said more than 100 people had been injured. No official confirmation of the dead or wounded was immediately available.

–   Witnesses said police in Pearl Square first attempted to shoot tear gas at the protest from a turnpike overlooking the west of the square, but wind blew the gas back at them. More forces then attacked from the eastern side, first bombarding the encampment with tear gas, then storming it from all sides, the witnesses said.

–   "They fired at our medical tent, they hurt our people," said another medical professional at Salmanyah Hospital, who declined to be named. "They throw us, shoot us, hit us with guns. I have a lot of injuries in our staff."

–   A 50-year-old man who identified himself as Hussein, who had stayed in the roundabout since it was first occupied, said between 5,000 and 10,000 protesters were in the square at the time of the attack—though his estimate couldn’t be verified. "Then hundreds of police came," Hussein said.

–   As the sun rose, witnesses said Pearl Square was empty and sealed off with barbed wire, and at Salmanyah Hospital, hundreds were still gathered outside. Many were crying, some lying on medical trolleys that couldn’t be squeezed into the emergency room. Some gathered in prayer, m.

–   "They are gangs; they are not government. It’s time to finish," Essan al-Mubarak said. "We will take our friends to our final resting place, then either we will stay or they will stay. We are fed up. We can’t take this."

–   Clashes between demonstrators and security police earlier this week in Manama resulted in two deaths.

–   A day earlier, thousands of demonstrators had gathered for a third full day of protests, as opposition groups attempted to give voice to the protesters’ demands and the government warned of threats to national unity.

–   Wednesday’s protests started without violence, and security forces initially remained withdrawn from the protest areas, stationed in large battalions about half a mile away—until the early morning assault.

–   Crowds had massed Wednesday at a hospital morgue, where the body of a man killed Tuesday, Fadel Salman Matrouk, was ferried out on top of a land cruiser in a coffin covered with green satin.

–   The mourners later joined thousands of other protesters camped out at the Pearl roundabout, a central traffic circle in Manama’s financial district of the capital, which had been claimed by the demonstrators as their version of Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

–   Meanwhile in Yemen Wednesday, two antiregime demonstrators died in the southern port of Aden, triggering pledges by protest leaders there that they would ratchet up pressure on longtime President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

–   The deaths were the first amid a series of recent protests that have rocked Yemen, initially triggered by Arab revolts in Tunisia and Egypt. The country’s relatively powerful opposition parties, which have led tens of thousands of demonstrators in the capital San’a in earlier marches this month, appeared to have lost control of what they had previously said were carefully choreographed demonstrations. Students and young activists, with no political affiliation, have taken to the streets of the capital for several days in a row.

–   Hospital officials in Aden confirmed that two protesters were killed Wednesday when security forces tried to disperse demonstrations there. The nature of their injuries wasn’t clear, but the deaths triggered a fresh outpouring of unrest.

In Bahrain—a Persian Gulf kingdom best known for its banking prowess, bars that cater to nationals from alcohol-free Saudi Arabia next door and the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet—Sunni Muslim rulers have long faced a restive Shiite population that alleges economic and political discrimination.

–   But this week’s protesters have represented a broad spectrum of opposition opinion. Some openly call for the downfall of the ruling Al-Khalifa family, while others want political reform with King al-Khalifa, remaining as monarch.

–   Seven political opposition groups, including the leading Shiite bloc Al-Wafaq, announced Wednesday they have formed a committee to help coordinate protest activity and unify the demands of the protesters.

–   The committee plans a massive demonstration on Saturday, forecasting a gathering of at least 50,000 people—a turnout smaller than those in Egypt, but large in a country with a population of around 800,000. These seven-group committee, which includes Sunni as well as Shiite politicians, planned to meet at least once a day starting Wednesday. "We need to unify the demands of the people on the square without telling the protesters what to do.

–   … In its objectives, this is a national unity movement; we have to convince citizens on the sidelines to join us," said Ebrahim Sharif, a Sunni Muslim and former banker who heads the secularist National Democratic Action society.

–   In a statement before Thursday’s clashes, Bahrain’s foreign minister Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said the government’s reform program will continue and pledged to investigate the two protesters’ death. He said the Ministry of Interior had placed in custody those suspected of involvement in the killings—"steps which make clear that the Kingdom of Bahrain does not condone the use of excessive force at any time."

–   In back-to-back news conferences, pro-government parties and a member of the ruling family warned that the protests could provoke "anarchy" and potentially undermine "national unity."

–   Bahrain’s protesters are overwhelmingly Shia and poor, although many Shia professionals working in central Manama have joined in, as have some Sunnis.

–   Although the protests have an overtly Shia choreography, with chanting, chest slapping and the culture of martyrdom, many here say the movement isn’t linked to Iran, the most populous Shia nation. A Shiite uprising in Bahrain would alarm Sunni rulers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, all Gulf countries with sizable Shiite minorities. They worry about the unrest spilling across their borders, and giving Iran more opportunities to meddle in the region.

–   In Yemen, protesters raided a local council building in Aden in retaliation for the deaths and set alight four government vehicles in the vicinity, according to eyewitnesses. By nightfall, protesters had surrounded a local police station in Aden. A government spokesman wasn’t available Wednesday to comment on the deaths in Aden.

–   In Iraq Wednesday, protesters demanding better public services set fire to government buildings in Wassit province south of Baghdad, amid clashes with security forces that left more than 50 wounded.

–   Around 1,500 people rallied in the central square of Kut, in the Wassit province, before marching to the provincial council building, picking up others along the way, according to protesters. The crowd threw stones at the building even as a delegation from the protesters met with council members inside.

and Hakim Almasmari contributed to this article.

–   A string of small but persistent and violent protests in Yemen is putting fresh pressure on President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who only last week appeared to have outmaneuvered political opponents by dialing back popular unrest.

–   On Tuesday, security forces dispersed hundreds of protesters for a fifth consecutive day, after pro-government and antigovernment demonstrators clashed in the capital San’a.

The series of protests, which began Friday evening as a small demonstration in celebration of the resignation of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, has swelled into daily, boisterous and violent clashes.

–   Mr. Saleh, in power for more than 30 years, is a key U.S. ally in its fight against al Qaeda, which has orchestrated a series of recent, sophisticated attacks from Yemeni soil. Washington has significantly boosted military aid to Yemen to help combat the local affiliate of the international terror group.

–   Mr. Saleh has a long history of neutralizing threats to his reign. He has so far kept at bay a secessionist movement in the south of the country and an on-again-off-again war with rebels in north Yemen.

–   Street protests calling for political and economic reform in the poor, autocratic Mideast country have gained momentum from revolts in Tunisia and Egypt. But unrest has so far been kept in check by Mr. Saleh’s security services and by pro-government supporters, who have faced off with protesters in the streets.

–   Yemen’s sanctioned opposition parties—which seek political reform and economic liberalization and which draw support from some of the same tribal affiliations as Mr. Saleh’s ruling party—have also showed restraint. They have carefully choreographed the handful of protests that they have organized, ensuring they finished early in the day and ended without violence.

–   Both ruling-party and opposition officials have warned that Yemen’s heavily-armed tribes could step into any power vacuum and set off more violence and unrest.

o    Mr. Saleh has also installed family members in key security positions, making his sudden removal a threat to law and order. That has kept most opposition leaders from calling publicly for Mr. Saleh’s immediate ouster.

–   "We’re not even in the area of thinking about that," said Hassan Zaid, general secretary of the Haq party, a leading opposition group.

–   Key to Mr. Saleh’s hold on power is the tacit allegiance of a crazy-quilt of tribal and local chieftains, which appears intact so far. But cracks are starting to form amid a backlash over alleged heavy-handed tactics used by his security forces in recent days to quell protests.

–   On Tuesday, Abdul Kareem Aslami, a member of parliament from Mr. Saleh’s ruling General People’s Congress, resigned from the party, protesting alleged abuses by Mr. Saleh’s security forces in dealing with recent protests. Mr. Aslami is also a prominent tribal sheikh in Yemen’s north.

–   "It’s sad that we call ourselves the ruling party when we cannot give people the simple right to protest," Mr. Aslami said.

–   Amid the wider Arab unrest, Mr. Saleh earlier this month made a series of political concessions to the opposition, including a promise not to run again in 2013. That appeared to satisfy opposition leaders initially. They called off protests and suggested they were ready to re-enter negotiations over political reform.

–   But opposition and ruling-party officials said in recent interviews they remained worried that activists outside the established opposition parties could mobilize on their own, inspired by uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Mohammed Abulahoum, a powerful tribal sheikh and a member of Mr. Saleh’s ruling party, said it was notable that during two opposition-organized protests earlier this month, many demonstrators weren’t affiliated with any party.

"The thing that worried me was the huge number of protesters who came out who weren’t part of the opposition parties," he said.

–   The more-recent protests have been much smaller than those earlier, opposition-organized events. But they have also been more violent.

–   Human-rights activists have accused Mr. Saleh’s security services and pro-government supporters of using violence to intimidate protesters. In clashes on Monday, pro-government supporters threw rocks at demonstrators, according to eyewitnesses.

Government officials didn’t respond to request for comment about the protests Tuesday or the conduct of security forces.

The recent protests have been a mix of impromptu, small sit-ins and demonstrations, and larger marches by students and young, educated activists, many not aligned with the political parties. In the past two days, judges joined some of the protests, according to eyewitnesses.

–   Amid the daily protests, opposition leaders appear to be hedging their bets. The Joint Meetings Parties, an umbrella group of the country’s biggest opposition parties, has ratcheted up condemnation of Mr. Saleh, accusing the security services of disproportionate force. Earlier this week, it said it was no longer willing to re-engage Mr. Saleh in dialogue unless further concessions were made.

—Hakim Almasmari contributed to this article.