Women set fire to veils in protest

Hundreds of Yemeni women set fire to their veils yesterday, in protest over the government’s brutal crackdown against the country’s popular uprising.

In the capital, Sanaa, the women spread a black cloth across a main street and threw their full-body veils, known as makrama, on to a pile, sprayed it with oil and set it ablaze.

As the flames rose, they chanted: “Who protects Yemeni women from the crimes of the thugs?”

Women in Yemen have taken a key role in the uprising against president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s authoritarian rule that erupted in March, inspired by other Arab revolutions. Their role came into the limelight this October, when activist Tawakkul Karman shared the Nobel Peace Prize, with two Liberian women, for their struggle for women’s rights.

Yesterday’s protest was not related to women’s rights or issues surrounding the Islamic veils – rather, the act of women burning their clothing is a symbolic Bedouin tribal gesture signifying an appeal for help to tribesmen.

The women who burned clothing in the capital were wearing traditional veils at the time, many covered in black from head to toe.