Local blogger irritates government in Yemen
Update: Wow! The article looks so good in hard copy! And its really on the front page. The APP published a photo of one of the massive protests in South Yemen and another of the poor residents of Saada in North Yemen digging out the bodies of a woman and baby killed in one of the government bombing strikes. And there’s a map! And several nice photos of al-Khaiwani, including the one where he’s interviewing bin Shamlan and smiling. So thats NICE. Some of the comments are hilarious. Scroll through, they’re even funnier than the comments at the article on Alarabiya’s website.
This is a recent letter from al-Khaiwani to his supporters here (before he got sentenced to SIX years for an article “liable to undermine the morale of the military”. Seriously, that’s the charge he was found guilty of.)
We believe that democracy and freedom have an expensive price…
Thank you very much for this campaign, which comes in the context of the overall values that we believe, and they punish us when we believe those values and adopt them. I do not want to talk about myself, but rather the environment that we live in and suffering we endure from the inconsistency between what the authorities announce about democracy and freedoms, and what happens when we believe in those same things, democracy and freedoms.
They want us to practice our rights as they understand them, but we do it ideally. The regime said that democracy is the way of ruling, but when we try to practice our rights within this concept, criticizing the way that the regime governs and how they act, then they deal with us in a way that has no relation to democracy. They deal with us as outlaws. They use all of the state’s resources to attack anyone who has any opinions not corresponding with their opinions, and to attack those who even discuss their way of ruling.
What I am suffering and facing is part of the price I and many others pay for the democracy and freedom we hope to achieve in the future. At least we are preparing for a healthy environment that we want the next generation to live in. We believe that democracy and freedom have an expensive price, and this is a part of that price.
However that doesn’t mean we will keep silent and bend, as it is the price. We will refuse injustice peacefully. Solidarity is a way to enhance new civil values which support the democracy we will make with our sacrifice and with the support of others. We pay the price of the freedom for ourselves and for the generations after us. Again, thank you very much for your help and support.
Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani
05/10/08
Sana’a, Yemen
And then he went to jail.
To the regular readers: NICE article in the APP.
Local blogger irritates government in Yemen
To rulers’ chagrin, she backs free press, democracy
By KIM PREDHAM
STAFF WRITERIn a country many Americans might have trouble locating on a map, one Monmouth County woman has become the focus of both hatred and admiration by government officials, journalists and citizens — all without ever leaving the comfort of her home.
“It boggles my mind entirely,” said Jane Novak, 46, an energetic stay-at-home mother of two who — between caring for her children and husband — devotes hours of her time exposing the alleged dirty deeds of the government of Yemen, especially its crackdown on opposition journalists.
“Whenever there’s a crisis in Yemen, we wind up eating takeout for, like, three days,” said Novak, a blonde Brooklyn native who becomes animated when the conversation turns to Yemeni affairs.
For a woman who has no connection to Yemen, never visited the country and is only now considering learning Arabic, Novak’s opinionated articles have managed to draw the ire of the Yemeni government, which has blasted her in the media and banned her blog, www.armiesofliberation.com, from being accessed within the country.
“It’s clear that people (in Yemen) do follow her blog,” said Joel Campagna, the Middle East program director for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
Novak has gained a following both inside and outside Yemen for her blog, which generally re-posts articles from sources within Yemen and includes her own opinions on what happens in that country.
“She (Novak) has done a lot of reporting on press freedom,” Campagna said. “It (the blog) has been an excellent source of news on Yemen.”
Novak was not always so well-known in Yemen, a country about double the size of Wyoming that lies between Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Sea.
Two years after the World Trade Center attacks, Novak decided she wanted to start a dialogue between the West and the Middle East by writing opinion columns for English-language Arab newspapers.
Novak freely admits she was an unlikely choice for the task. She studied political science and international law at Brooklyn College, but said she has no background in either the Middle East or journalism.
Nevertheless, in 2003, Novak said she started sending her work to whatever organization would publish her, which included news outlets around the world.
For about a year, Novak wrote columns and blogged, generally on topics such as democracy and freedom of the press, she said. But it was not until she started focusing on Yemen that she says she became the polarizing figure she is today.
Novak’s interest in Yemen began in 2004, when she said she first learned the story of embattled Yemeni journalist Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani.
The editor of an opposition news Web site and former print weekly, al-Khaiwani is one of the more well-known examples of Yemen’s campaign against the often outspoken independent media in that country. Critical journalists in Yemen have suffered a range of violations, from assaults and kidnappings to arrests and blackmail, journalists and advocates say.
In recent years, al-Khaiwani’s supporters say he has endured imprisonment, an abduction and beating and death threats against himself and his family — all for his critical news coverage of the Yemeni government, they believe.
The journalist’s newspaper, Al-Shoura, had come out strongly against the Yemeni government’s handling of a regional insurgency that broke out in the north in 2004. Hundreds of civilians have died in the conflict and thousands have been displaced from their homes, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In 2004, al-Khaiwani was sentenced to a year in jail for incitement; insulting the president, Ali Abdullah Saleh; publishing false news; and causing tribal and sectarian discrimination, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Saleh pardoned him in 2005.
A state security court in Yemen sentenced al-Khaiwani again on Monday, this time to six years in prison for allegedly belonging to a cell of anti-government rebels and for conspiring to carry out attacks on government forces and civilians. The sentence was criticized by several groups worldwide, including the U.S. State Department, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Amnesty International, which is considering al-Khaiwani for a human rights media award.
Novak has been advocating for al-Khaiwani since his initial round of legal troubles, when she first learned of his case.
She remembers reading about him, and being amazed to learn that al-Khaiwani refused to apologize for his work, even if it meant his loss of freedom.
“I thought, “Wow, he’s a modern hero,’ ” Novak said.
She began writing and blogging regularly on his case. Eventually her work reached al-Khaiwani, who she said wrote her a letter from jail.
“It was like the Martin Luther King Jr. letter from Birmingham (jail),” Novak said.
She posted the letter on her blog, along with a petition for his freedom. The two have since struck up a friendship, even exchanging family pictures.
During his recent trial, she circulated another petition with the help of the group Hands Across the Mideast Support Alliance and other bloggers.
As Novak became more involved in al-Khaiwani’s case, she also began learning more about his troubled country and its government. She said it was her editorials on these subjects, not her work for al-Khaiwani, that has so upset the Yemeni government.
Novak has been verbally attacked frequently by government officials and their sympathizers in the nation’s media, Campagna said. She has been called a CIA agent, a Zionist and even — one of her favorites — the docile pupil of a monkey monk. (The phrase refers to a follower of a rebel leader in Yemen, Novak said.)
“It’s rather risky for a Yemeni journalist to say what Jane says,” a longtime Yemeni journalist, who asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions, wrote in an e-mail.
Novak raises issues that journalists in Yemen might hesitate to broach, the journalist said — issues such as a possible coordination between the Yemeni government and some al-Qaeda members, and the “mysterious” escape of al-Qaeda detainees from Yemeni jails.
Novak’s reach is hard to gauge, but the journalist said most Yemeni journalists know who she is. She was also able to reach a large Yemeni audience in 2005, when she made a controversial appearance on the popular television channel al-Jazeera.
“I can say that Jane’s position as an American and her straightforward articles that touch upon many “taboo’ issues makes her a favorite read in Yemeni newspapers and Web sites,” wrote the journalist.
“The impact is mainly evident in having people think about what she says. I could go so far as suggesting that Jane is at times an agenda setter in Yemen when it comes to controversial investigative reports,” the journalist said.
Whatever troubles her work may cause her, Novak says she is fueled by two things: the need to publicize often-ignored issues and the support she receives from Yemenis.
“They’re just all so nice. I get letters like fan mail,” she said.
And, as Novak is well aware, whatever hassles she experiences mean little compared to what her counterparts in Yemen endure.
“What they do to me, they do to the Yemeni journalists 10 times worse,” Novak said.
