Yemen

Yemenis stage demo against Saleh’s relatives in power

Yemenis have taken to the streets to call on the government to dismiss the relatives of former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The demonstration was staged in the Yemeni capital Sana’a on Wednesday. The protesters also renewed calls for the trial of Saleh and demanded that their revolutionary goals be fulfilled.

Earlier in the day, unidentified gunmen shot dead a Saudi Arabian diplomat and his bodyguard in the city’s southern district of Hada, an area which is home to diplomatic residences and embassies.

Hundreds of thousands of people have turned out for regular demonstrations in Yemen’s major cities since January 2011, calling for an end to corruption and unemployment and demanding that relatives of Saleh be sacked from their government posts.

Saleh formally stepped down and handed over power to then Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi in February 2012. The power transfer occurred under a Saudi-backed deal brokered by the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council in April 2011 and signed by Saleh in Riyadh on November 23, 2011.

Yemen is the Arab world’s poorest country. Forty percent of the people of Yemen are living on two US dollars a day or less and one third are wrestling with chronic hunger.

About 31.5 percent of the population is “food insecure” and around 12 percent of the Yemeni people are “severely food insecure,” according to the United Nations.

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