Yemen Monitor/ Newsroom:
Several Yemeni governorates witnessed a simultaneous wave of popular protests on Sunday evening, reflecting a state of escalating public anger due to the deterioration of basic services, chief among them electricity, and the rising cost of living, amid hot weather and suffocating humidity that compounded the population’s suffering.
In the temporary capital, Aden, protests broke out in the Crater and Mualla districts, where citizens expressed their anger over continuous, prolonged power outages. Local sources reported that dozens of residents gathered in main streets, including Arwa Street and Al-Aqaba Road, and sat out on the roadways in a protest scene that reflects the scale of daily suffering with power cuts lasting for long hours, especially with rising temperatures and humidity.
The protests extended to the Mualla district, where citizens gathered on the main street, demanding improvements to the electricity service and an end to the worsening crisis that recurs daily amid an obvious lack of solutions.
Videos circulating on social media showed citizens in Mualla coming out to the streets with their mattresses and pillows, a symbolic protest step reflecting their inability to stay inside their homes under the harsh weather conditions and power outages.
In Mukalla Governorate, protesters cut off a number of main roads and detained tankers, in protest against the continued deterioration of the electricity service. Local sources explained that several roads were closed in neighborhoods including Belqis in Khor Mukalla, Dis Mukalla, and the Sharij area, amid rising popular anger as a result of long power outages.
In a related context, the city of Tarim in Hadramout Governorate witnessed a gathering of citizens at the Al-Kitab (Al-Dallah) roundabout, responding to a call for a discussion on service and living conditions. Participants raised demands related to providing domestic gas at the official price, lowering fuel prices, and addressing the worsening electricity crisis.
Participants in the meeting gave the competent authorities a three-day deadline to respond to their demands, hinting at escalatory steps in the event of non-compliance, including the possibility of cutting off the international highway from the western entrance of the city.
In Al-Ghaydah Governorate, the National Council for the People of the Governorate organized a peaceful protest rally in which a number of citizens participated, to demand the improvement of basic services, the payment of overdue salaries, and a resolution to the electricity and petroleum products crisis.
The participants stressed that their movement comes within the framework of delivering the citizens’ voice to government agencies, demanding urgent measures to address the service and living deterioration, and emphasizing the authorities’ responsibility to improve basic services, foremost of which are electricity and fuel.
These protests come at a time when Aden is witnessing a sharp decline in electricity service, with outage hours rising to unprecedented levels in recent days, raising fears of a worsening humanitarian crisis if the situation continues without urgent solutions.
Activists believe that citizens have the right to express their suffering peacefully to demand basic services, stressing that the protests reflect the volume of economic pressure experienced by the population, in light of a continuous deterioration of the service infrastructure.
In contrast, there are growing calls for local and central authorities to intervene urgently, contain the crisis, and prevent the situation from sliding into further tension, while focusing on finding sustainable solutions to the electricity and services crisis, away from temporary fixes or unfulfilled promises.
