1,000 protesters march in Salalah

After eight weeks of a sit-in in front of the governor’s office in Salalah, matters took a different turn this Friday, with around a 1,000 people setting off on a protest march in central Salalah.

The demonstrators walked to the highway resulting in blocked roads and a roundabout before turning around and coming back to the square they have been occupying. Police were present but only to manage the ensuing traffic chaos.

The demonstrators, chanting slogans, carried banners with the same demands as they have had from the beginning. The march began shortly after the Friday prayers. An active member of the protests, whose primary responsibility so far has been to collect donations to fund the sit-in, delivered this week’s hardline Friday sermon.

The tone of the speech bordered on veiled ultimatums, a definite departure from the speeches of Imam Nasser Sakroon, who has been addressing the Friday gathering so far.

Residents of Salalah said that the march had been planned all through last week, with unidentified youth going into educational institutions asking people to join in. “They went into Dhofar University and entered some of the classrooms asking the students to come and join the protest,” said a resident.

The numbers at the sit-in had been dwindling fast over the last couple of weeks, with only a few hundreds now remaining. “From over 6,000-7,000 earlier, they are down to about 600 now. But this Friday, almost 1,500 were present for the Friday prayers, of which about a 1,000 went on the march,” said an eyewitness.

(With inputs from Susan al Shahri in Salalah)