Security forces clear roundabout in Muscat

Muscat: Baton wielding security forces removed more than 1,000 protesting Omani job seekers from the Bait Al Barka roundabout late Tuesday evening. 

Unemployed Omani youth started streaming in at this busy roundabout that links Oman's northern region and Muscat starting Monday night after hearing about the recruitment for the armed forces, according to some of the youth.

However, a large number could not get inside the nearby Ministry of Defence (MOD) premises, as the doors to the compound were shut down when the number of job seekers kept swelling.

Unable to get into the MOD compound, the job seekers started gathering at the Bait Al Barka roundabout, which leads to one of the residential palaces of Oman's ruler Sultan Qaboos Bin Saeed. 

As the crowd started getting bigger, armoured vehicles, water cannon mounted vehicles, as well as a big number of security forces descended on the roundabout. The security forces asked the protesting job seekers to leave the Bait Al Barka roundabout.

However, while some protestors took to their heels, others were arrested for refusing to leave, leaving police with the last resort to mild baton charge to drive away the others. 

Eventually, some of the protesters were taken in buses by the security forces for enrolling for recruitment. Subsequently the number of protesters at the roundabout went down drastically by Tuesday afternoon, but as evening approached their numbers started increasing again. 

Protests

Since January 17, Oman has seen protests in various forms for varied demands from employment to loan waiver. It all started with a Green March in Muscat that asked for, among other demands, removal of some of the ministers for alleged corruption. 

The country's ruler made drastic changes in the Council of Ministers, giving berth to seven new ministers, who had won elections to the country's Shura councils.

Oman's monarch even announced creation of 50,000 new jobs for the Omani citizens in public, as well as the private sector, including an unemployment allowance. 

The protests, however, spread to other towns in the country such as Salalah, Sur, Ibri and Sohar. 

In Sohar, the protests turned violent in February, and protesters had even taken over the Globe Roundabout, a major thoroughfare in this industrial port town. Since then, two people have died in conflict with the security agencies.

However, army took complete charge of Sohar last Friday and since then the city is back to complete normalcy.