SHAFAQNA (Shia News Association) — Yemeni troops have opened fire on unemployed protesters in the southeastern province of Hadhramaut, killing one person and injuring at least 11 others.
Witnesses said dozens of jobless Yemenis held a demonstration near the main gate of an oilfield operated by the French company Total in Hadhramaut province on Monday to ask the energy firm to hire them, AFP reported.
Troops guarding the facility fired tear gas and live ammunition at the protesters, killing one and injuring 11, with five of them in serious condition.
"The unemployed protesters were intending to organize a sit-in in front of the oilfield to demand jobs from the oil companies," a witness added.
Total has been operating in Yemen since 1987 and has an almost 40 percent stake in the Balhaf liquid natural gas plant.
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 former dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh be sacked from their government posts.
Saleh formally stepped down and handed over power to 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’s 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.
Some 31.5 percent of the population is “food insecure” and around 12 percent are “severely food insecure,” according to the United Nations.—http://www.shafaqna.com/english
