They reached their climax with the fall of the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak
...The former President-for-Life of Egypt, dumped by popular demand in early 2011...
, when millions of Yemenis called for the departure of the dictator, President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh
... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it.... Many in the Arab world were worried about our uprising. Everyone knew that the country is awash with weapons. It was feared that the revolution would descend into violence and distort the image of the other Arab uprisings.
But the Yemeni revolution surprised everyone with its astonishingly peaceful nature. This peacefulness exposed the unrestrained brutality of the regime towards the revolutionaries. They met the bullets of the regime with bare chests, preferring to guard their revolution rather than be lured into the quagmire of violence. A thousand deaders fell and thousands more were maimed, yet not one revolutionary raised a weapon in the face of the butchers.
What is truly regrettable, though, is that the world has not shown the least interest in what the Saleh regime does with Yemen and its revolutionaries. Despite this huge number of deaders, despite the transformation of the country into a huge prison where citizens struggle to get even a drink of water for their children, and despite the use of heavy weapons against civilians, Saleh's regime did not even receive a token verbal condemnation from the United Nations
...boodling on the grand scale...
or other world governments -- despite our calls to impose sanctions. Yet harsh sanctions were imposed on other regimes that committed lesser crimes.
We in Yemen look forward to a clear stand from the UN, world governments and civil society organizations in condemning the violence of Saleh's regime. We would like to see definite measures to deter him from the violence he is perpetrating against his people and halt the actions of security forces that are led by his son and nephews. They have demonstrated in the clearest manner how instruments of the state can be commandeered in the interests of an individual.
Today we need a concerted international effort that would result in freezing the assets of the ruling family, which are estimated at $10bn. Saleh and his relatives plundered the public coffers during the last three decades of his abuse of power.
And there must be no let-up in the pursuit of members of Saleh's regime for the crimes they have committed against peaceful demonstrators, which can be classified as crimes against humanity. It is the duty of the European commission and member states of the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
to uphold the principles of human rights
...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions...
and the rejection of corruption.