Hundreds of Thousands Protest Across Mideast
The ranks of protesters opposed to President Ali Abdullah Saleh swelled Friday. One banner said, “Leave Ali, I lost all I had.” More Photos »
By SHARON OTTERMAN and J. DAVID GOODMAN
CAIRO — Hundreds of thousands of protesters turned out in cities across the Middle East on Friday to protest the unaccountability of their leaders and express solidarity with the uprising in Libya that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi is trying to suppress with force.
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The worst violence of the day appeared to be in Libya, where security forces shot at protesters as they left Friday prayers to try to launch the first major anti-government demonstration in the capital. Demonstrations in recent days have been in other cities, and several of those have fallen to armed rebels determined to oust Colonel Qaddafi.
Protests in Iraq also took a violent turn, with security forces firing on crowds in Baghdad, Mosul, Ramadi and in Salahuddin Province, killing at least ten people. Unlike in other Middle Eastern countries, the protesters in Iraq are not seeking to topple their leaders, but are demanding better government services after years of war and deprivation.
Religious leaders and the prime minister had pleaded with people not to take to the streets, with Moktada al-Sadr saying the new government needed a chance to improve services and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki warning that insurgents could target the gatherings. But on Friday, the deaths came at the hands of government forces.
Demonstrations elsewhere — in Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt and Tunisia — were almost exclusively peaceful.
In Bahrain, pro-democracy demonstrations on a scale that appeared to dwarf the largest ever seen in the tiny Persian Gulf nation blocked miles of downtown roads and highways in Manama, the capital. The crowds overflowed from Pearl Square in the center of the city for the second time in a week, but the government once again allowed the demonstration to proceed.
Late Friday, in what appeared to be a concession to the protesters, the king fired three ministers. But he did not fire the prime minister — one of the opposition’s main demands.
Government forces had cracked down brutally last week, killing at least seven, but backed down under intense pressure from the United States. Since then, the country appears to be locked in a battle of wills between mostly Shiite protesters and their Sunni monarch. Shiites are a majority in Bahrain, a United States ally, and they say they have long faced discrimination from the country’s minority Sunni elite.
In a shift, it was the country’s Shiite religious leaders who called for people to take to the streets Friday, rather than the political opposition. Although some of the chants and symbols Friday had a religious cast, protesters’ demands remained the same — emphasizing a nonsectarian call for democracy and the downfall of the government.
“We are winners, and victory comes from God,” protesters chanted in Manama.
A few of the protesters carried black flags — a Shiite mourning symbol — but they appeared in a vast sea of red and white, the colors of Bahrain.
Crowds stretched two miles to the Bahrain Mall, east of Pearl Square, and about another two miles southwest of the square to the Salmaniya Medical Complex, which has treated wounded protesters and been a focal point of demonstrations.
The violence in Iraq came after demonstrators responded to a call for a “day of rage,” despite attempts by the government to keep people from taking to the streets. Security officials in Baghdad banned all cars from the streets until further notice.
In Yemen, more than 100,000 people poured into the streets of the city of Taiz, a center of the protests, after the country’s embattled president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, pledged on Wednesday not to crack down on demonstrators. Protesters in recent weeks have faced sporadic violence from security forces and government supporters.
The protest in Taiz was dubbed “Martyrs’ Friday,” in honor of two protesters who died in a grenade attack last week.
While weeks of protests in the capital, Sana, have been tense, with repeated clashes between pro and antigovernment forces, the demonstration in Taiz, the intellectual hub of the country, took on a hopeful, exhilarated feel Friday. Along with the youth who organized the protests on Facebook, older residents of the countryside flowed into the area of the town that protesters have dubbed Freedom Square.
“There are no parties, our revolution is a youth revolution,” read one banner. In emulation of Egypt’s Tahrir Square, the center of the protest zone in Taiz was filled with some 100 tents, where people had spent the night for more than a week.
A cleric delivered a morning speech, reminding the people that the revolution was not against a single person but against oppression itself. And as noon prayers ended, the people broke out into the roaring chant that has now become familiar around the Arab world: “The people want to topple the regime.”
At the same time in the capital, tens of thousands of people were pouring into a square near the main gates of Sana University amid a tight security presence, The Associated Press reported.
Demonstrations turned violent in the port city of Aden, where security forces clashed with thousands of protesters in various districts of the restive city, The Associated Press reported. In contrast with the protesters in Taiz and Sana, who have sought the ouster of Mr. Saleh, those in Aden have focused on secession and drawn a more violent government response. One person was killed and 25 wounded on Friday as security forces fired on the crowds, according to witnesses, and protesters stormed a municipal building, Reuters reported.
In Cairo, tens of thousands of Egyptians flooded Tahrir Square as much to renew the spirit of Egypt’s popular revolution — which resulted in President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation on Feb. 11 — as to press for new demands. The square that was the epicenter of the uprising felt like a carnival, filled with banners in Egypt’s national colors of black, white and red. Vendors sold cheese and bean sandwiches and popcorn; a man fried liver on a portable grill, and others sold revolutionary souvenirs, like miniature flags.
The spirit of the revolution, which had included people from all segments of Egyptian society, was still evident, as secular leftists, members of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, and women wearing full Islamic veils with children in their arms circulated through the crowd.
Ismael Abdul Latif, 27, a secular writer, chatted with the religious women, only their eyes showing, as they drew revolutionary posters.
“I never dreamed in my wildest dreams that we would be talking to a munaqaba”— as women in full veils are called — “in Tahrir Square,” he said. “A secular artist is having a political debate with a fully veiled lady and having a meaningful conversation. What’s the world coming to?”
But there were also signs of tension, as well as a reminder that the military ultimately remains in charge. Several hours into the demonstration, an army officer demanded that protesters dismantle the tents they were again erecting in the center of the square, touching off a series of angry arguments.
The military government has been making political concessions since taking over, but the crowds Friday wanted more. There were fervent demands for the resignation of the cabinet that Mr. Mubarak had appointed before his downfall, as well as the dismantling of the security apparatus, the release of prisoners still held under Egypt’s repressive emergency laws, and the prosecution of former leaders for corruption.
George Ishaq, one of the founders of Kifaya, an early protest movement here, led chants through speakers, saying, “Our demand today is a presidential council in which civilians will take part. We want it to be one politician, one judge, and one representative of the armed forces.”
“We are not leaving, he’s leaving,” the crowd chanted, referring this time to Ahmed Shafiq, the prime minister, with the slogan that had foretold Mr. Mubarak’s fall. “Mubarak left the palace, but Shafiq still governs Egypt.”
Similarly peaceful demonstrations in Amman and other cities in Jordan were the largest yet after eight weeks of protests calling for political reform. Activists from the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition groups said that the large turnout was a reaction to the violence that erupted last Friday, when government supporters clashed with a relatively small group of several hundred demonstrators, injuring eight. The protesters described being attacked by “thugs” wielding wooden clubs and iron bars.
At this week’s rallies, Jordanians called, among other things, for an end to corruption, more democracy and the cancellation of the 1994 peace treaty with Israel, according to the popular Jordanian news Web site Ammonnews.
And in Tunisia, where protesters forced President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali from power and set off the wave of regional unrest, Reuters reported that tens of thousands of people marched in the capital, Tunis, on Friday, calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, a former ally of the ousted president.
Sharon Otterman reported from Cairo and J. David Goodman from New York. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Manama, Bahrain; Jack Healy, Michael S. Schmidt and Duraid Adnan from Baghdad; Laura Kasinof from Taiz, Yemen; Liam Stack from Cairo; Ranya Kadri from Amman, Jordan, and Isabel Kershner in Jerusalem.
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