Armies of Liberation

Without addressing corruption and misallocation of resources, economic reforms further impoverished the poor.

SANA’A, June 28 (UPI) – A policy of economic reforms adopted by Yemen has had the negative — and unintended — effect of further impoverishing the poorest of all Arab countries.

A study prepared by Dr. Abdo Ali Othman, a sociology professor at Sanaa University, Wednesday showed that the economic reforms programs, in place since 1995, have mainly harmed Yemen’s poor and middle classes.

Yemen is not expected to achieve its development objectives and aspirations in the first quarter of the current century under the existing conditions and in light of the reduction of assistance by international donors, which constituted the main financial support for the country’s development programs, the report said.

The study noted that the reforms programs did not achieve the aspired results as they failed to secure steady development, aimed at reducing poverty, and that sponsors of the programs had punished Yemeni society by reducing due assistance.

At the same time, the sponsors had failed to provide real solutions to the causes of the development crisis — financial and administrative corruption and the rampant waste of Yemen’s capacities and resources.

The study indicated that the sterile economic reforms policies resulted in weakening and reducing the middle class, which largely slipped into poverty as a result, further increasing the number of Yemeni’s living in abject poverty.

But the study did note a number of positive results stemming from the reforms programs, notably an improved image of the country in the eyes of investors, the restoration of confidence in the local currency, the encouragement of local savings and increased deposits in Yemeni banks.

But these positive features, coupled with a slow economy, failed to prevent an increase in poverty and unemployment and the descent of a significant portion of the middle class into poverty.

The study pointed out that 42 percent of Yemenis live below the poverty line, with the majority of those coming from rural areas.

More from News Yemen on the study.

Similarly, foreign aid without rule of law does little to enhance development as per this article.

At least the harassment has been named, even if it wasn’t included in the statement.

NY:

The last session of the Sana’a conference entitled “Democracy, Political Reforms and Freedom of Expression” was to change into a quarrel between some participants over points in the final statement of the conference.
Yemeni Civil Society Organizations could get a recommendation in the final statement urging the Yemeni government to “consider oppression against syndicates and civil society organizations and asking for more space of freedom and stopping interventions in their affairs.”
But the representatives of the government, ministers of foreign affairs and information protested the recommendation and said it should be omitted from the final communiqué.
Foreign minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi said the recommendation includes an accusation against the government of practicing repression against civil society organizations, but situation is “totally different”, according to al-Qirbi.
Minister of information Hassan al-Lawzi interrupted and said that the recommendation based on “doubts and devil wills”.
“In this way, we will continue to rotate in a vacuum. We cannot come to good results,” said al-Lawzi.
The Tunisian repertoire of the conference Lutf Haji intervened to mitigate the Yemeni political tension over the point. He said the recommendation was not obligatory and that it was only for drawing the attention of the government over the situation of the civil society organizations.
Nevertheless, Haji intervention was refused as the Yemeni official side urged the recommendation should be omitted. Then the recommendation has been changed to be general and does not mean a specific country. (Read on …)

I think maybe the plan was to kill him in court.

Two young bearded men threatened the defense lawyer of Yemen Observer in the court room that they would have killed him if they have power. Khalid Al-Anesi, who defends Mohammed Al-Asaadi, editor-in-chief of the Yemen Observer, in the south east of the capital, was alerted minutes before the death threat by a close friend, as he described him.

Abdullah Al-Farza’e, who was introduced later as an Imam of a mosque, attended the hearings on purpose which is just to alert Al-Anesi of plans to attack him by young radicals. “Al-Farza’e heard about the plan and moved to the court to warn me,” Al-Anesi said. “I trust him.”

The two young men, who failed to escape from the court, are detained for investigation. They came with a large group of long-bearded people who fill the small courtroom, where the judge looks into the case filed by the general prosecutor for press and publication against Yemen Observer and its editor for republishing fragments of the Danish cartoons with a huge X over them last February.

Read the rest.

Snagged by the Indians: ToI:

NEW DELHI: Keeping as it does a watchful eye on the rapidly-modernising Chinese Navy, the Indian Navy has detected, tracked and photographed three spanking new Chinese submarines in the Mediterranean region.

This is the second such instance of remarkable long-range maritime snooping by the Navy this year. Its TU-142M and IL-38 maritime surveillance aircraft had “spooked” a new Chinese destroyer off Yemen’s Socotra Island, almost 2,300-km away from the Indian mainland, as was reported by TOI in February.

This time, four of its warships — destroyer INS Mysore, guided missile frigates INS Brahmaputra and INS Betwa and tanker INS Aditya — came across the three submarines being transported on board two carrier “mother” ships transversing through the Suez Canal and Red Sea earlier this month.

“These three Kilo-class submarines, armed with the latest Klub-S cruise missiles, are the last batch of the eight contracted by China from Russia in a $2-billion deal in 2002,” said a top source.

same old, same old

Sanaa: The final communiqué of the Sanaa International Conference on Democracy, Political Reforms and Freedom of Expression fails to outline concrete steps for reforms in the region, participants complained.

Some participants of the two-day conference, opened by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, which concluded on Monday, also criticised the final statement of the conference as a “repeat” of previous conferences that were not implemented. They described the statement as a “governmental vision”.

“The final communiqué is a governmental vision and not the participants’ vision,” said Sadeq Al Mahdi, former Prime Minister of Sudan, and a participant.

Sa’ad Eddin Ebrahim, chairman of Cairo-based Bin Khaldun Centre for Human Rights Studies, said “the final statement is a carbon copy (of) … previous conferences that came out only with statements without any follow up mechanism”.

But Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr Al Querbi, who chaired the concluding session, defended by saying that the recommendations were more important than the statement.

“As there is a refusal (of) the dictatorship of governments, there should be also a refusal (of) the dictatorship of the civil society, so what should be done is to refuse the dictatorship of all sides,” Al Querbi said. The conference had some 500 participants from Arab and G8 countries, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan

Thats a good point about implementing demcoratic proceedures in civil society.

SANAA, 27 June (IRIN) – Calls for greater cooperation between state and non-state actors to boost democratic reforms in the Middle East were made at a two-day conference in Sana’a which ended on Monday.

About 400 government officials and civil society representatives, as well as media professionals from Arab and non-Arab countries, attended the event – entitled “Sana’a conference on democracy, political reforms and freedom of expression.”

“This is a very important conference which brings together the government and civil society to debate issues of common interest and work together to carry out democratic reforms,” said Eiz Eddin al-Asabahi, Director of Yemen’s Human Rights Information and Training Centre (HRITC).

The conference was organised under the G8-created programme of Democratic Assistance Dialogue (DAD) by Yemen’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, HRITC and Italy’s No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ).

Khalil Jubarah, Director of the Lebanese Transparency Society, said that change in the Middle East was inevitable but the question was how Arab countries coped with it. Jubarah also said that two major obstacles to political and economic development were a lack of information and corruption.

“Studies have proven that corruption and a lack of access to information are two faces of the same coin,” he said. “Political repression has caused the absence of information.” A number of speakers also mentioned the state monopoly over broadcast media as a good example of the absence of transparency and real democracy.

The DAD programme was established under the G8 initiative “Partnership for progress and a common future with the region of the broader Middle East and North Africa” at a 2004 summit. Countries of the Middle East and North African region are involved along with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey and Italy.

Ah yes, the old “there’s no democratic development possible internally with out solving the problems of other countries first” routine. And then “the give me money” schtick. In the process, he insults the Iraqis.

News Yemen: The participants in the conference of “Democracy, Reform and Freedom of Expression” agreed that development, fighting violence and ensuring the culture of dialogue are priorities to maintain democracy, freedoms and human rights in the world in general and in the participating countries in particular.
At the opening speech, president Ali Abdullah Saleh called rich countries to help the poor.
“Poverty is a threat and if peoples remain unable to overcome poverty, we will be laughing at our peoples when say that democracy is going ahead,” said Saleh. “Before circulating for democracy in the region, we have to stop violence in Iraq and Somalia.”
How could we talk about freedoms, democracy and reforms while terror still surrounding us, right and left, and the Palestinians continue bleeding,” Saleh inquired.
Saleh defended the Palestinian resistance and said “that is Jihad and resistance against occupation.” He also described the situation in Iraq as “disgraceful”, calling occupation forces in Iraq to adopt a national dialogue between all Iraqi factions under the sponsorship of the United States.
“Teach us democracy and its advantages and while you teach us you have to feed us because we hate to get just theories,” said Saleh calling upon the greatest countries.
The US deputy assistant Secretary of State Scott Carpenter, who attended the conference, said in a brief press statement on the sidelines of the conference that many Iraqi participants in the conference “felt insulted for belittling democracy in Iraq”.
“What is the road map should the region adopt to obtain goals of democracy?” Carpenter inquired. “Do Yemenis believe that the Iraqi democracy is suitable for them? I think no.”
He said that the most important point in this conference is to specify the goal the region wants to attain. “This conference is important to identify the goal we want”, said Carpenter.
Carpenter said that every country in the region has its own democracy. “In Yemen, they want democracy to be Yemeni. In Egypt, they want it to be Egyptian and in Lebanon, they want it to be Lebanese. No similarity between those models,” said Carpenter. “United States did not impose specific model on the Arab region.”
Former Iraqi minister of human rights Bakhtyar Ameen strongly condemned those, he described as “some people”, who muck the democracy in Iraq.
“Belittling democracy in Iraq is an insult that we do not accept at all. Iraq has taken positive steps toward building up democracy in spite of big security challenges”, said Ameen.
He called Arabs to consider the current dialogue and political argument in Iraq and to help Iraq tackle security problems.
Foreign minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi defended the view of president Saleh and said there has been misunderstanding over the points that president mentioned in his speech, particularly describing the situation in Iraq as “disgraceful” and asking the developed countries to help the least developing ones.
Al-Qirbi said president has the right to speak over issues that democracy faces. “Democracy has economic price so president asked for the help of the rich to improve living standards of peoples and enhancing development,” said al-Qirbi. He said that the Palestinian resistance is legal, condemning any kind of unjustified violence.
The UNDP representative in Sana’a Flavia Panasery called Arab leaders to respect “the necessity of sharing all in decision-making”.
“Democracy needs daily exercise so that people can live freely and in prosperity. The political development requires fit dialogue between different viewpoints and the multiparty is a crucial component of any democratic system,” said Panasery.
President Saleh’s political advisor, Abdul-Karim al-Iryani said in his speech to the conference “if we have a look to democracy in the region, we will find three kinds of systems: system of unborn democracy, system of immature democracy and system of developing democracy.”
Al-Iryani admitted that political systems in the region are not democratic. “If the political systems in the region are built up on democratic bases we will not need to hold such conferences and forums,” said al-Iryani.
The final session of the conference on Monday focused on “freedom of expression”. The speeches and interruptions dealt with freedom of press and expression and the right of all people to get access to information.
The participants asked for laws that prevent journalists’ imprisonment over publishing critical materials, provide more space for free media, particularly in the Arab countries and disallow the monopolization of the public visual and audiovisual media outlets.
The participants said that media control by regimes is a concrete evidence of their lack of transparency and real democracy as those regimes still have fears due to wrong security practices and political corruption.
The executive manager of the Lebanese Transparency Foundation, Khalil Jabarah, said the change is inevitable, but he said all should think how to benefit from that change.
“There is strong relationship between corruption and the lack of information and democracy. And this is the most important obstacle against the political and economic development,” said Jabarah. He said that the political repression for a long time caused a lack of access to information.
“You cannot often get information except when an official flee to another country or when a quarrel occurs between officials themselves. Then you can get secret information,” said Jabarah.
Director of Al-Jazeera Space Channel’s office in Lebanon, Ghasan bin Jiddu, disagreed with Jabarah. He confirmed that there was a remarkable development in getting access to information in the last ten years, comparing with the past.
“There is advancement in getting information due to efforts of information advocates. It is not a gift from anybody,” said bin Jiddu.
Bin Jiddu said there were three obstacles against the information access: accusation of conspiracy by the ruling systems; the disability of the authorities to differentiate between the necessity of reform, democracy and information and keeping sovereignty of the countries.
“We do not accept to lose sovereignty and we do not accept to lose information. There is no contradiction between sovereignty and getting information. This is just in mind of corrupts and autocrats,” said bin Jiddu.
After 11 September events, we found that European countries practice coercion against the press photo. They do allow only photos that serve their own interests. For example, the picture of a Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces is not as important issue as killing an Israeli child” bin Jiddu underscored.
The same happens in Iraq. What serves the occupation is allowed to be aired by media. But covering the Iraqi resistance is not allowed, bin Jiddu added
He concluded his speech as confirming that price of getting information has become very high.
The conference included 400 participants form Middle East countries, Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States of America in addition to intellectuals, journalists and human rights activists.

Kuwait Times

Temptations, Resignations
By Badrya Darwish
It’s not a common practice amongst leaders in the Third World, especially in the Arab world, to resign. They serve their terms, which are usually indefinite – till God knows what happens…
So it was surprising when the Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh sometime last year announced that he would not be running again for office. On Saturday, Saleh reneged on his word and decided to run again. He justified this change by saying “As a loyal member of the Yemeni people, I bow to their request.” His speech came during a big demonstration in Sanaa, with more than 1 million people carrying placards reading “We want you back!”, “Save the nation!” and so on.
So upon the request of the nation, Saleh has decided to stay in power. This reminds me of Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser when he resigned following the Arab defeat in the 1967 war with Israel. The day he announced his resignation, millions of Egyptians flocked to Cairo from all over the country demanding Nasser to stay. Nasser stayed. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not doubting that there Yemenis who want Saleh to remain in the presidential palace. Neither do I doubt what took place in Cairo in 1967.
But I’m amazed that our leaders only answer to the nation’s request when we ask them to remain in power. But when we come up with demonstrations asking them to leave, the jails are suddenly overflowing and we the people are branded as traitors. I’m not saying they shouldn’t listen to us when we ask them to stay, but they should also listen to us rest of the time too. Isn’t that what democracy is all about?
I know Arab leaders can change. For instance, Ali Abdullah Saleh gave an order prohibiting the display of his photos in the capital after seeing the posters of Saddam trampled and degraded following his ouster in 2003. This is unprecedented in the Arab world. I hope he doesn’t go back on his decision regarding the exhibiting of his photos. To clear my conscience, it’s worth mentioning that the only Arab leader who resigned and stuck to his word was Lieutenant General Abd Al-Rahman Siwar Al-Dhahab, ex-leader of Sudan. Although he came to power in a military coup in April 1985, his regime legalised political parties, held elections and handed over power to a civilian government one year later.
I’ll close by saying ‘Good Luck’ to Saleh and ‘Hat’s Off’ to Siwar Al-Dhahab.

Eight.

YT: According to the study, early marriage for women has reached 52.1 percent, based on the stories of 1,495 couples, whereas men marrying at an early age comprised only 6.7 percent. The marriage age has increased over three generations from between ages 10 and 24 to between ages 14 and 70. The study also found variations in marriage age according to the geographical districts to which Yemenis belong.

In Hodeidah, Hadramout and Sayoun, girls marry at age 8, whereas they marry at age 10 in Mukalla. Moreover, marriage age varies between urban to rural areas. It’s found that the appropriate age for marriage is from 15 to 16.