Journalist Badly Beaten Covering a Strike
A peaceful sit-in protesting unpaid wages sounds like a reasonable way to express dissatifaction. So of course the 150 workers get surrounded by 200 police, who then also beat the journalists. What was it Condi said about a town square?
AJN: Yemeni police have beaten an Arab satellite channel news crew covering a strike by textile workers, leaving a cameraman with three broken ribs and internal bleeding.About 150 workers at a textile factory in the capital, Sanaa, were on Saturday striking for unpaid wages at their workplace, not far from a home of President Abdullah Saleh when the violence occurred.
About 200 police surrounded the journalists and beat Mujib Swailih, a cameraman for the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya network.
Hamud Munasil, the head of the Al-Arabiya office in Sanaa, said Swailih’s injuries were serious. Najib al-Sharibi, a correspondent for the Saudi government-run Al-Ekhbariya satellite network, also suffered minor injuries.
“Mujib Swailih was beaten with truncheons several times” by police deployed in force around the sit-in before being taken to a police station where the cameraman “was insulted”, one of the station’s employees said.
Dubai-based Al-Arabiya denounced what it said was “a hostile mobilisation campaign towards journalists, particularly correspondents from foreign media, targeted by defamation in government newspapers” in Yemen. Yemeni police were not immediately available for comment.
Yemeni newspaper editor Jamal Amir said in August that he had been abducted and beaten by armed men claiming to act on behalf of military officers and wanting to know about his sources.Journalists have reported a concerted campaign of abuse and harassment by the government in recent weeks.
Al-Thawra, the government-run daily newspaper, has carried editorials over the past several days accusing reporters of being “agents of foreign intelligence networks” that seek to hurt Yemen’s image by claiming that it harbours terrorists.
There is a pattern of trashing the journalists. Are they just trying to turn the public against them and thereby diminish the impact of the reports, or has Saleh slipped into a paranoid delusion where everyone is out to get him?
Update: “The attack against Suwailih, whose ribs were smashed and who suffered from internal bleeding, proves that those policemen attempted manslaughter.” Munassar said. The second victim, Al-Akhbariya’s correspondent in Sana’a Najeeb Al-Shara’abi, said “if it were not for the swift action taken by the protesting workers in holding the policemen back, Suwailih may have been killed at the spot”, stressing that the attack was ‘vicious’ and unexplainable.
Update: Police brutality common:
Farhan said he was subject to torture and humiliation by the investigation officer, and was taken by two soldiers to the roof of the police station only to be beaten up again. When questioned about those claims, the police officer admitted that Farhan “only received three slaps on the face because he was too philosophical and instigating.”
NY: Al-Houthi said that “three of our colleagues who were imprisoned before the 2004 war were released”, noting that those whom he described as “heroes” were “healthy young men when they were imprisoned, but ended up impaired –when they were released- due to the brutal torture to which they were exposed while in prison.”
But the nightshift duty officer of the same police station said he could not provide any information because of “superior orders not to talk to non-governmental media”.SC :“This mode of behavior is utterly unacceptable under any circumstance”, said a spokesman for Al Arabiya. Furthermore, Al Arabiya demands that the relevant authorities in Yemen initiate a transparent investigation into this outrage and provide names of the culprits who must be held accountable for their actions. Accountable? No Yemeni officials are ever accountable.
