Violence in Yemen Escalates

With all eyes on Libya late last week, it was still surprising that Yemen's woes were all but ignored. I switched between CNN, MSNBC and Fox News and found little reportage on the current state of affairs there -- aside from a couple 30 second spots and running text beneath the stories of Libya and Japan. The story, of course, is that (government?) snipers killed 52 anti-government protesters on Friday, and Saleh declared a state of emergency in Yemen (just as Bahrain did earlier in the week) on Saturday.

Thank God for Al-Jazeera, which faces greater security risks than western media when reporting in Yemen, but nevertheless does a better job in educating English readers. Last week, they did an in-depth story on Tawakkol Karman and the protest movement in Yemen called "Yemen: A tale of two protests."

My favorite blogger on Yemen (and a foremost scholar), Gregory Johnsen, has an up-to-date list of defectors from the regime located here. This list is substantial - including the resignation of Yemen's ambassador to the UN, who resigned this weekend.