A Camera is not a Gun: Yemeni Editor
Security forces are finding it harder to block out the news in Sana’a than it is in Sa’ada or Dhalie, but they’re trying.
Security assaults NewsYemen editor and other journalists
Security personnel on Thursday assaulted the editor of NewsYemen AbdulSatar Bagash for taking pictures in a massive rally in Sana’a against the upcoming parliament elections.
Bagash said the security personnel have opened fire on him and beat him with sticks and took away his camera as he was taking pictures outside the Ministry of Justice.
Chief Editor of NewsYemen, Nabeel al-Sufi, said the attack on Bagash and other journalists over covering a public protest means that police have received direct orders to violently deal with journalists as enemies.
Al-Sufi has urged the Ministry of Information to compensate Bagash and to return the camera and pictures. “We do not ask for punishment against security personnel but they should be informed that the camera is not a gun and Yemen has a press law which prohibits violence with press like treachery against the country,” said al-Sufi.
The first deputy chairman of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate, Saeed Thabet, and other journalists from al-Ayyam daily, Yemen Observer, New Yemen news website and the Women Journalists Without Chains were assaulted during covering the protest.
YJS and the Women Journalists Forum has condemned assaulting journalists and said such practices do harm Yemen’s image and provokes violence and hatred.
More on the Sana’a demo at Yemen Post
Confrontations between security forces and demonstrators affiliated with the opposing Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) left 23 protesters injured, three in serious condition, as protesters were attacked by governmental forces. Governmental sources were forced at times to shoot bullets to the air to disperse protesters from the scene.
Despite the fact that security forces were armed with batons and armed, they blocked all the roads leading to Al-Tahrir, the supposed congregation place for the protest. The JMP gathered nearly eighty thousand of their followers in the protest and called for boycotting the forthcoming parliamentary elections due to be conducted in April 2009.
Journalists were also attacked while covering the protest, as seven journalists were injured. A number of journalists reported that their cameras were damaged and were verbally threatened by security forces.
Opposition sources revealed that 24 of demonstrators were arrested. Hours later, they were released.
As they were denied access to the congregation place, demonstrators marched through the streets of the capital protesting what they called attempted rigging of elections and the illegitimacy of the Supreme Commission for Elections and Referendum (SCER).
