While world attention has been fixed on Japan’s tragedy first, and then the western intervention in Libya, other flash points in the Jasmine Revolution have dropped off the public Radar and autocrats have used the inattention to brutally suppress the protestors in their countries. With the Saudi intervention in Bahrain, that rebellion has little chance of success for now, but in Yemen, things are looking up. For starters, the Yemeni UN Ambassador has resigned in protest.

Yemen’s ambassador to the United Nations Abdullah Alsaidi has resigned, the latest high-ranking member of President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s government to quit in protest against the killing of dozens of demonstrators. Snipers killed up to 42 protesters among crowds that flocked to a sit-in at Sanaa University after Friday prayers. The opposition says at least seven snipers were caught carrying government identity cards, a charge the government has denied. "Mr. Alsaidi has sent his resignation to the president’s office and the Foreign Ministry," a Yemeni Foreign Ministry official said on Sunday, and added that it was in protest at the Friday violence. Defying a crackdown after the government called a state of emergency, the opposition has vowed to keep up its pressure to end Saleh’s 32-year rule in the poor Arabian Peninsula state, a neighbor of Saudi Arabia and a U.S. ally against al Qaeda… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Common Dreams>

I commend Saleh for having the integrity to place human rights over his own position.

In addition, key military leaders have defected and deployed tanks to protect demonstrators.

Three Yemen army commanders, including a top general, have defected to the opposition calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down, as tanks were deployed in the streets of the capital. The most senior of the three officers is Major General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a long-time confidant of Saleh and commander of the army’s powerful 1st Armoured Division. Units of the division were deployed on Monday in a major square in Sana’a, where protesters have been camping out to call for Saleh to step down. All three officers belong to Saleh’s Hashid tribe, which called on the president to step down on Sunday, delivering a serious blow to his attempts to cling on to power. The two others are Mohammed Ali Mohsen and Hameed al-Qusaibi, both brigadiers. News of the defections came one day after crowds flooded cities and towns across Yemen to mourn dozens of protesters killed on Friday, when Saleh’s security forces opened fire from rooftops on a demonstration in Sana’a.

Inserted from <The Guardian>