Armies of Liberation

*****Open Season On Journalists in Yemen*****

I cant even list it all. I’ll try to summerize. First Jamal Amer is kidnapped, beaten and threated. Then the local AP guy as well as Sami Ghalib, the editor of al-Nidaa newspaper, had their offices raided and files and computers stolen. Another journalist, Mohammed Saleh Hadiri, is reporting threats. Khaled Salman is facing charges for writing about corruption. The editor of socialists paper al-Thoury is going to court for the 13th time. And now the Yemeni Air Force has kidnapped Khaled Hamadi, Sanaa reporter for Alquds Al Arabia. He was later released. Al-Usboo, an independent newspaper: editor restricted and paper suspended for two months. This is all this week.

Maybe if there had been some kind of response (from anybody but the blogosphere, thank you people) last month when they did all this to al-Khaiwani and al-Shoura, there wouldn’t be this sense of impunity now. “Free speech is both a basic human right and an essential element of democratic goverance, as one petitioner for Mr. al-Khaiwani highlighted in a quote by the first U.S. Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson: ‘Our liberty depends on freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.’” Big props to Steven and Dean for their ongoing support for Yemeni journalists, who in general, refuse to be intimidated into silence by a violent, brutal, immoral, thoroughly corrupt regime.

The official Yemen News Agency:

“An official source in the defense ministry strongly warned local media and correspondents of foreign newspapers and news agencies not to deal with secrets related to armed forces and national security. The source said ” the prohibited materials and information related to armed forces are considered as military secrets and disclosing them harms the national security. The source warned that any body deals with such secrets would be interrogated. It considered the military secrets as redlines which journalists must not trespass.

I guess some of the secrets not to deal with is how corrupt the military is and how the Russian migs, that were part of a 350 million dollar weapons deal, keep crashing. The fact that the military is openly warning the journalists in this official english statement is troublesome.

The EU is giving Yemen 7.5 million euros “aiming at backing the Yemeni government efforts for poverty alleviation and enhancement of democracy.” Yes you read that correctly, the EU thinks the Yemeni government is working to enhance democracy and allieviate poverty. Later in the article we get this: “interest by the European Commission in encouraging efforts that Yemen is exerting for the consolidation of democratic successes and respect for human rights and aiding its efforts in fighting terror.”

Beginning of updates to original post:

Yemeni Government Threatens to Behead Journalist for Article on Corruption
Also beat him for four hours, threaten to cut out his tounge, shoot at him, threaten to throw him off a cliff, and threaten his kids if he discloses the incident or continues to document the rampent corruption among the very top officials in Yemen. They came in a presidential vehicle with government plates.

Update 8: The editor of Al Usboo, an independent newspaper, has been restricted from working for two months and the paper suspended. ADNKI:

One government-run publishing house refused to print the Al-Osboa newspaper on Wednesday last week. Al-Osboa’s editor said in a statement that the order came from the Press and Publication Prosecutor following a court verdict that the editor, should be suspended from his job for two months. Editor-in-chief Jamal Hassan, told the Yemen Observer that the prosecutor had continued to pursue the case, despite the newspaper printing an apology for the offending article, and even after the interior ministry dropped the case.

Update 7: (8/31/05) Now the Yemeni Air Force is snatching journalists :

A Yemeni journalist has been unheard of for more than day after being taken away by the command of the army`s air force, reports said Wednesday.

The independent Yemen News Web site quoted sources as saying that Khaled Hamadi, the Sanaa correspondent of the London-based Arabic daily al-Quds al-Arabi contacted a colleague and informed him that he was summoned by the air force command and taken to an unknown destination.

8/31/05 “The sources told “Sahwa net” that Al-Hamadi’s family told them of his disconnection with them since yesterday and that he told them that he received a call of parties of ministry of defense as he published news of falling a plane (another Russian Mig crashed) in Hodiedah.”

Update 6: al-Shawa 8/24 publishes the plate number as part of the YJS statement: “His family told YJS that anonymous persons embark army car No. 2111121 )….”

Update 5: The Yemen Times has updates from RSF, CPJ, and AI. The Yemen Observer doesnt mentioned any of the incidents but instead is calling for a law that prohibits “slander of the the powerful” and blames the journalists themselves for the violence against them: “The sporadic violence against journalists is merely a result of an unchecked democratic openness both in the mentality of the journalists and the readers.”V8.I34 (This is the same paper that ran an article calling me an extremist and another saying I’m a paid operative.)

Update 4: The next day security forces raid the offices Ahmed al-Hajj, an Associated Press journalist, and seize the computers and files AND they raided the offices of journalist Sami Ghalib, a journalist at al-Nidaa newspaper, and seized files and computers.

Update 3: YT I really can’t believe it. Every new article I find has more details. This one includes that they were shooting at him and threatened to throw him off the cliff.

“A group of armed men on board a vehicle with a military plate number waited for me near my house; when I arrived, they ordered me to go with them and threw me into their vehicle”, Jamal Amer said in a statement to the Yemen Times. “The attackers blindfolded me, bound my hands and bundled me into another car some time later after moving from the place of the incident.”

“I was then taken to a remote area outside the capital and threatened to be thrown from the peak of a mountain,” the victim added. “The merciless assailants hit me badly and fired shots in order to terrorize me.”

The perpetrators told the victim that his newspaper could criticize the government without naming any officials. One of them threatened to cut off his tongue if he dares write against government officials…. No official denounciation was made and no action was taken by the authorities at the time of going to the press….

Update2: That sleezy, slimey dirtbag of a government threatened his kids.

The assailants, dressed in plain clothes but driving a vehicle with military license plates, beat Amer and threatened to kill him. They warned Amer that his children’s safety would be threatened if he continued with his investigative reporting or reported his abduction to the authorities. Reports say the assailants condemned Amer for writing on corruption within the government and interrogated him about other writers and editors at Al-Wasat.

Update: they threatened to cut out his tounge or behead him for an article on corruption in doling out scholarships. (summary of the article on scholarships follows)

Jamal ‘Amir, editor in chief of the Yemenite independent weekly Al-Wasat said armed men blindfolded him, pushed him into a vehicle and took him to a remote location near the capital ‘Sana.

They beat him and threatened to cut off his tongue or to kill him and behead him, the London-based Al-Hayyat reported. He was released more than four hours later….

Al-Hayyat added that the paper published a list of children of senior officials who are studying in the United States, the United Kingdom and Malaysia, with large oil companies footing the bills.

This is a summary of the offending article that I got in the mailbag before the editor was kidnapped and honestly I didnt think it was that big of a deal considering all the corruption in Yemen, so I didnt even post it. But I guess since it named the top officials, it pushed a few buttons. Apparently what they find reeeeally annoying is naming names. Ill keep that in mind for sure:

“A note of information that you should be privy to. The Alwasat weekly newspaper has published an article reporting on who is sent for college studies in the U.S., England, and Canada. The article is quite informative in that it stated that the amount of students (56) sent to the three nations on government scholarships are all sons of ministers, prominent sheiks, Ambassadors, relatives of Ali Saleh, etc… Most were not worthy of the scholarships…They got the scholarships by way of orders from the Prime Minister himself, by the President, or by other high officials. The article goes on to emphasise that most of the students sent to the three countries on government shcholarships were also receiving monthly allotments from other sources, for example, the Ministry of Higher Education, the Ministry of Defense, the Interior Ministry, the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Yemeni Oil Company.”

Original post follows:

Un-fricking-believable

Its like the Twilight Zone over there, complete anarchy, the only rule is power. They take this editor and beat him up and tell him not to write about government officials. They took him in a military car. Lets review normal intimidation tactics on the journos in Yemen: death threats, threats against their kids, slander, arrests, taking newspapers, cloning newspapers, assaults, letter bombs, the list goes on. This more than anything else shows Yemen is not anything close to a democracy but instead is a repressive dictatorship.

Jamal Amer, editor-in-chief of the independent weekly newspaper al-Wassat, told Reuters armed men blindfolded him, forced him into a military car and took him to a remote area outside the capital Sanaa where they beat him.

“They warned me about slandering state officials and questioned me about writers and editors at the newspaper, and about our sources and funding,” he said. Officials were not immediately available for comment.

Here’s another article thats expands on the dangers of exposing the thievery of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his band of crooks:

SD: SANAA, Yemen, Aug. 23 — The incident, the latest in a series of moves aimed at terrorizing the local press, outraged the press syndicate which issued a strongly worded statement condemning “the unprecedented wave of oppression targeting journalists.”

“The press body in Yemen is experiencing the age of terror, especially since the publications started speaking openly about corruption and scandals in which officials are involved, including the Yemeni president personally,” the statement said.

Another journalist, Mohammed Saleh Hadiri, has been complaining of anonymous harassment and threats following the publication of his article on the corruption of the regime which he described as “futile.” In the past Hadiri has been imprisoned and barred from writing for a year. A third journalist, Khaled Salman, is scheduled to appear before a press court Wednesday regarding a report he published entitled “Those who are robbing the nation’s wealth.”

HOOD: Article 42 of the constitution declares: “Every citizen has the right to contribute to the political, social and cultural life. The state guarantees the freedom of thought and the expression of opinion by utterance, writing and taking photos within the limits of the law.”

Yemen Times : Journalists have also openly criticized the corruption and abuse of power by the highest officials in the Government, including President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and apparently this is what has provoked the recent series of attacks against outspoken journalists.

The Yemen Observer has nothing on the kidnapping but IFEX is all over it:“Jamal Amer was kidnapped outside his home by gunmen using a Presidential Guard vehicle…RSF said, “This case serves as a reminder that it is still very difficult to work as an independent journalist in this country and we call on the Interior Ministry to conduct a thorough investigation in order to identify those responsible.” (The Interior Minister? Are they trying to be funny? Who is responsible? I can tell who is responsible from here in Jersey. Im not trashing RSF which is a good organization but when the thugs arrive in a presidential vehicle, it should be apparent who is responsible.)

In related news, the editor of the socialists paper is going before the prosecutor for the 13th time (24/8/2005 al-Shawa): “Editor of (Al-THawri ) newspaper , khalid Salman, was stood before prosecution of journalism and printed matters according to summoning sent to him last Monday because of publishing an investigation around practicing business by some of authority leaders. In the meanwhile, Al-Thawri newspaper was stood, today, before municipality west-south court on a case sued by financial office manager against journalist Mohammad Al-Jaafi, The court adjourned Taiz financial case to 17 pronounce a judgment. According to special statistics to “Sahwa net” , this arraignment is the thirteenth for “AL THawri” newspaper ” mouthpiece of Yemeni socialist party “.

In an propagnda move designed for the West, Saleh is mumbling things about fighting corruption and reducing excessive public spending. But of course, if Saleh was serious about fighting corruption, he would welcome the list of the 58 corrupt officials published in al-Wasat by Jamal Amer instead of sending some Republican Guards to beat him up.

(This is a carnivalized post: the Raging Rinos are at Big Cat Chronicles, the Carnival of the Revolutions is simply amazing at One Free Korea this week, the Jersey Carnival features a cool interactive map by PDC Ryan that shows where everyone is blogging from. And the Ladies Cotillion continues to take the world by storm. Also thanks for the trackys, comments, and linky love peps. )