Two Protesters Dead in Bahrain
The New York Times reports:
More than 10, 000 people streamed into the capital’s central Pearl Square on Tuesday in the largest political protest to hit this Persian Gulf kingdom in recent memory.
Galvanized by the death of a demonstrator in clashes with the police on Monday, protesters waved flags and chanted “peaceful” under the square’s towering monument as a police helicopter hovered overhead. Hundreds of protesters also massed on a nearby bridge overpass.
Protester chanted: “We’re not Sunni. We’re not Shiite. We just want to be free.” While festive, the atmosphere among protesters, who passed out sandwiches and talked about creating their own version of Egypt’s Tahrir Square, was cut through with a sense of foreboding as dozens of police cars could be seen gathering nearby. The police blocked protesters from the square on Monday.
“We advise citizens to stay away from Pearl roundabout area to avoid traffic jams,” the Ministry of Information said in a statement posted on Twitter.
Hours before, protesters clashed with the police and a second demonstrator was killed by gunfire, spurring the largest Shiite bloc to suspend its participation in the country’s Parliament.
The events came after thousands of mourners gathered for the funeral of the Shiite protester shot to death during what was called a Day of Rage protest on Monday, modeled on outbursts of discontent that have toppled autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt since mid-January and spread on Monday to Iran.
With only about a million residents, half of them foreign workers, Bahrain has long been among the most politically volatile countries in the region. The principal tension is between the royal family under King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and the ruling elites, who are mostly Sunnis, on one side, and the approximately 70 percent of the population that is Shiite, on the other.
But protesters young and old called for a new Constitution and democratic changes to allow for a more effective representative Parliament and government. King Hamad has been promising to open up the political system for a decade, but progress has been slow.
As protests widened around the region after the revolution in Egypt, the king made a rare television appearance in which he offered condolences on the protesters’ deaths and said the process of change in the kingdom “will not stop,” according to the official Bahrain News Agency.
In Yemen, police officers wielding wooden batons prevented several hundred antigovernment protesters from marching near Sana University in the capital, witnesses said, and a group of pro-regime demonstrators set upon them hurling stones. In response to earlier demonstrations President Ali Abdullah Saleh promised to step down by 2013, but that pledge has not defused anger with his American-backed rule, dividing opinion among Yemenis over whether he should leave sooner.
The demonstrations in Bahrain on Tuesday, a public holiday marking the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, drew thousands of people who followed the body of the protester slain on Monday, Ali Mushaima, from a hospital morgue to his home outside Manama to be prepared for burial.
Mourners chanted slogans demanding the ouster of the ruling elite, echoing calls in Tunisia and Egypt.
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