SANA, Yemen — The continuing wave of unrest sweeping the Middle East led to a fifth day of protests Tuesday in Yemen while thousands of protesters swept into the main square of the capital of Bahrain, setting up tents and vowing to stay until the government agrees to major reforms.
In Iran, hardliners in parliament demanded that opposition leaders be executed for advocating protests that attracted tens of thousands of people.
As many as a thousand anti-government protesters marched through the streets of the Yemeni capital, Sana, but it was large numbers of supporters of President Ali Abdullah Saleh who appeared to have the upper hand, gathering in a downtown festival with music and nationalist slogans.
Young men in tribal dress milled around the entrances to the square bearing sharpened sticks and bludgeons, and pictures of the president, who has ruled Yemen for more than 30 years, suddenly proliferated on cars and buildings around the capital.
Yet despite a day of fewer clashes than before, Yemeni protesters vowed to press their street revolt until Saleh steps down.
“Years of trying to keep the Yemeni people in ignorance and poverty have failed,” said protester Jameel Awad, 28, a taxi driver. “Tunisia and Egypt have shown us that nothing is impossible. The youth see that this is their time to claim the future . . . and we will not let the opportunity pass.”
In Bahrain, the death of a second protester, killed when police clashed with mourners at a funeral assembly for a demonstrator shot Friday, prompted more than 6,000 people to march into Pearl Square in the capital of Manama. Many declared their intention to remain until the government addresses long-standing grievances over political discrimination and police repression.
Protesters have said their chief demand is the resignation of the prime minister, Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa, the king’s uncle and one of the wealthiest men in the country, who has held the post since Bahrain’s independence from British control in 1971.
By Tuesday night, protesters were setting up tents and sleeping bags and passing out food, water and tea in an echo of the 18-day occupation of Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
The protesters have included both Sunni and Shiite citizens, but one of their major grievances has been repression and discrimination of the country’s 70 percent Shiite majority by the Sunni monarchy and elite. The main Shiite Islamist opposition bloc, the Islamic National Accord Society, also known as al-Wifaq, announced it was boycotting the parliament in protest of the violent tactics used against peaceful protesters.
Two young men also died in Iran in demonstrations on Monday, when tens of thousands of marchers demanding an end to repression and calling for free elections were set upon by citizen militias known as Basijis and police wielding tear gas and rubber bullets.
Some members of parliament called for the executions of opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi.
“The chiefs of the sedition have reached the end of the road and it is time for (the authorities) to do their duty and judge and punish them,” Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said in a statement carried by the Fars news agency.
President Barack Obama on Tuesday accused Iran’s leaders of hypocrisy for first encouraging the protests in Egypt, which they described as a continuation of Iran’s own revolution, and then cracking down on Iranians who used the pretext to come out on the streets. He then urged protesters to muster “the courage to be able to express their yearning for greater freedoms and a more representative government.”
But speaking to other restive countries, including Bahrain, Obama directed his advice to governments, not protesters, illustrating just how tricky diplomacy in the region has become. He said his administration, in talking to Arab allies, was sending the message that “you have a young, vibrant generation within the Middle East that is looking for greater opportunity; and that if you are governing these countries, you’ve got to get out ahead of change. You can’t be behind the curve.”
Administration officials see an opportunity to expand the fissures in Iranian society and make life more difficult for the mullahs.
“This isn’t a regime-change strategy,” a senior administration official insisted in recent days. “But it’s fair to say that it’s exploiting fractures that are already there.”
Dealing with other countries in the region is more complicated, however, particularly if they are strategic allies, such as Egypt. The same complexities apply to Bahrain, an island state that is home to the United States Navy’s 5th Fleet, and Yemen, where the U.S. conducts counterterrorism operations with Saleh’s government.
The New York Times contributed to this report.
