YEMEN: Nobel Peace Prize winner still on front line of protest

[struggle4progress]

October 7, 2011 | 9:38 am

Early this year, as the so-called Arab Spring swept across the Middle East and North Africa, Tawakul Karman moved into a tent in a sprawling encampment of anti-government protesters in Yemen's capital, Sana, that became known as Change Square.

That is where the journalist and human rights leader received the news Friday of her Nobel Peace Prize, and where fellow protesters came to congratulate her.

"All the Yemeni people now, all the in Change Square, they are celebrating," she told Al Jazeera English in a telephone interview. "They are so happy, because this is their victory. It’s the victory for their methods in this revolution. ... I am so proud of them."

The peaceful protests Karman organizes against President Ali Abdullah Saleh have been eclipsed in recent months by tribal fighting and government offensives. She said she has been threatened with jail and even death, but that she remains unbowed ...

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/10/yemen-nobel-peace-prize-tawakul-karman.html