Craziness next door

The North/South secession rumors are getting serious. We keep hearing about large protests taking place in various towns around the country, people getting fed-up, and increasingly militant government action. The other day the government shut down SIX private newspapers, I guess free-press in Yemen is over. One of the newspapers being shut down is Al-Ayam, which is located RIGHT next to my family. In fact Bilal, the father freelance writes for them from time to time. So yesterday after classes a fellow teacher whom I’m only slightly acquainted with came up to me and asked if I was going anywhere that day. She was very awkward and shady the way she said it. I was like “um… yeah… well now I’m going to lunch, and then probably back to my apartment to grade some tests, and maybe after I’ll…” I was wondering if she really wanted a play-by-play account of my day, or if she was asking because I was missing an important meeting or something. “Well are you going to meet your family tonight?” she asked. Hmm, how odd. I’ve certainly never told her about my family. “There are some problems with the Al-Ayam newspaper, which, as you know, is located right next to your family’s house. Don’t go to Crater today.” Several other teachers gave me similar warnings. Wow, I guess they’ve been checking up on my activities. This isn’t unusual for Yemen though- The government monitors phone calls(remember I had to give a copy of my passport and full fingerprint set to the government before I could get a SIM card) and every night I run a virus scan on my computer and delete dozens of tracking cookies.
So I was essentially forbidden from leaving the Khormaksar region. President Ali Abdullah Saleh had ordered the arrest of the owner of the Al-Ayam newspaper, but he was resisting arrest. Everyone says that the Al-Ayam paper is the best in Yemen because it isn’t censored by the government and actually prints the truth about what’s happening. The government claims that Al-Ayam is inciting separatist action and they wanted it disbanded. What happened was total chaos. Lots of shooting, rioting, even a death. Or three, it’s unclear. The big May 22nd anniversary of the unification is quickly approaching and it will be interesting to see how things play out.

Some more leisure reading as time allows:

Al Jazeera InsideStory

Al Jazeera Middle Easter News: Yemen

BBC News: Yemen