Gulf | Yemen
Yemenis call for Saleh's help after being ousted from village
A group of Yemeni citizens have demanded President Ali Abdullah Saleh protect them after a tribal shaikh allegedly drove them from their village for not recognising his authority.
- By Nasser Arrabyee, Correspondent
- Published: 00:47 March 3, 2008
Sana'a: A group of Yemeni citizens have demanded President Ali Abdullah Saleh protect them after a tribal shaikh allegedly drove them from their village for not recognising his authority.
"We want to join the republic; we want to deal with the government, not with the shaikh," said one of the 100-strong group who arrived in Sana'a from the Al Ja'ashen district in Ibb province on Saturday.
They said they would demonstrate in Sana'a until their demands were met. A civil society organisation has allowed the demonstrators, who have been given money and blankets from charities, to use its yard to sleep in during their stay.
On of their placards, they wrote "He praises you with his poems but he expels us from our houses," an obvious reference to Shaikh Mohammad Ahmad Mansour, one of Saleh's 111 appointed advisors in the Shura Council.
Shaikh Mansour has written famous poetry praising Yemeni and Arab presidents, kings and princes. The displaced men told Gulf News the shaikh's soldiers came to their village of Al Anseen, asking residents to pay 10 per cent of their income as a tax to the shaikh. They refused saying they would only pay it to the government, as is the law.
"Then his soldiers started to take our property and livestock by force, so we have come here to tell the public what's happening," one of them said.
Lies
Tribal shaikhs taking the law into their own hands is common practice here, especially in rural areas where central government control is weak.
Shaikh Mansour, however, denied the allegations.
"All this is lies," said the shaikh, who spends most of his time in Sana'a leaving his family to supervise his property and land leased to Al Ja'ashen residents, "the shaikh's kingdom" as the demonstrators described it.
Last year, about 100 citizens also from Al Ja'ashen came to Sana'a accusing Shaikh Mansour of dismissing them from their villages of Al Safah and Ruash attracting the attention of the media and human rights groups.
After public pressure, the government returned the men to their villages and told them to pay duty to it rather than to the shaikh.
"We are fine now. We deal with the government. We have joined the republic," said Mohammad Mane'e, who came to Sana'a to support the Al Anseen villagers.
At the time, the shaikh told officials and the media that the demonstrators were his tenants and he was only asking for rent.
Most of the current demonstrators said they were not tenants and wanted to pay tax directly to the government.
"We are not here to deny his land, we are here to refuse his control over us outside the law, " said one.
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