Breakdown of Transnational Repression 109 (or believed) to be pro-regime. Though the respondents interviewed in this study affirmed that they would continue to be public regardless of the eventual outcome of the revolution, many knew of others who remain silent or guarded.6 Hassan of SAC-LA cited this as a pervasive dilemma for Syrians because “we enjoy freedom and democracy. We came to this country for those things. That fear should not be there. And still, people are afraid.” 4.1.4 The Yemeni Case: Regime Repression’s Effect on Public Mobilization Protests broke out in Yemen’s capital city of Sanaʻa on January 15, 2011, in support of Tunisia’s revolution, and street-level demonstrations grew steadily each week across the country. Calls by demonstrators known as the “independent youth” for Saleh to step down were intertwined with calls by the legal opposition, including Yemen’s Al-Islah Party and the Yemeni Socialist Party, for reform. After Yemen’s first Day of Rage on February 3, protesters pitched tents at the newly christened Change Square at Sanaʻa University and in Freedom Square in Taʻiz. Regime forces killed several participants in response and spurred a steady growth in protests and sit-ins. The resignation of Egypt’s president on February 11 escalated Yemen’s uprising. Thousands took to the streets to demonstrate in at least eight cities across different regions of Yemen, including in the restive South and its largest city of Aden. In the North, the regime deployed al-baltajiyya – plainclothes security forces and thug groups – to disperse protests by force. Repression in the South included a series of coordinated attacks, firing on fleeing civilians, preventing doctors and ambulances from reaching injured demonstrators, and disappearing victims (Human Rights Watch 2011a). In the capital and elsewhere, erratic shootings by Saleh’s forces killed about a dozen protesters each week. By the end of February, regime violence prompted Hussein al-Ahmar, a paramount leader of the prominent Hashid tribal confederation, to rally thousands of tribesmen to the cause. He also urged northern Houthi insurgents and southern secessionists to “drop their slogans, adopt a unified motto calling for the fall of the corrupt regime” (ICG 2011d: 5). In February and March, some southern protest factions acquiesced to requests by northerners not to raise the secessionist flag. In early March, Saleh announced that he would implement reforms while also deporting as many foreign journalists as his enforcers could get their hands on. Soon after, the regime attempted to clear Sanaʻa’s Change Square for good. During a day of protest dubbed the “Friday of Dignity,” or Jumaat al-Karamah, Saleh loyalists shot and killed more than fifty unarmed protesters 6 Several participants in LA-area protests declined to be interviewed in 2014. A mutual friend explained that because the territories in which their families reside were constantly changing hands, they no longer wanted to be publicly identified as supporting any one side in the conflict. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press