30 Yemeni Newspapers Accused of Publishing News are Fatwa-ed and Embargoed
Where are the donors? The UN? Ah yes, the UN praised Yemen’s HR record and the donors are interested in al Qaeda and in stabilizing the criminalized regime of Ali Abduallh Saleh. What kind of moronic, shortsighted 9/10 type of thinking is that? Not a creative, pragmatic or forward thinking individual in the bunch. To the extent that the circumstance in 2009 was predictable in 2004, averting the looming disaster on all fronts certainly cannot be a function of more of the same reactive policies.
SANA’A, May 17— The government has prevented the distribution of seven independent newspapers for the second week running and charged its journalists with attempting to harm supreme national interests, triggering widespread condemnation from media and human rights organizations worldwide.
Up to 30 editors and journalists from newspapers Al-Share’, Al-Masdar, Al-Diyar, Al-Nida’, Al-Watani and Al-Ahali, as well as Al-Ayyam, have been accused of inciting their readers to armed insurrection and posing a threat to national unity.
Based on a request by the Ministry of Information, the Press and Publication Prosecution last week questioned journalists from these newspapers, before charging them with, among others, provoking sectarian strife among Yemenis.
The journalists are expected to be tried in the special media court established last week with the approval of Minister of Justice Ghazi Shayef Al-Aghbari, who said the new court would bring all press and publishing-related legal cases under one roof in Sana’a. He said the aim was to “serve and protect the press.”
Sami Ghalib, editor-in-chief of Al-Nida’, said to the Yemen Times that he, Shae’ Al-Abd, Fuad Musad and Abdulaziz Al-Magidi from the same newspaper, and another twenty journalists from targeted newspapers faced charges of “spreading hatred among Yemenis and calling for breaking up national unity.”
He pointed out that the government considers any coverage of the current social unrest in Yemen’s southern governorates as inciting towards insurrection and threatening the supreme interest of the nation.
“Instructions went given to imams to welcome closure of the newspapers in their Friday sermons,” said Ghalib. “The government is campaigning against journalists”
He explained that, when instructions by the Minister of Information came to state-owned printer and publisher Al-Thawra to stop printing Al-Nida’, he approached a private printing company to continue distributing his weekly, but the latter refused to help, citing fear of prosecution under Article 103 of the Yemeni Journalism Law.
According to a statement from Al-Share’ newspaper on Friday, the Ministry of Information issued an order for all printers and publishers in Sana’a, including Al-Thawra, not to print any copies of any of the targeted newspapers.
“Unfortunately, the board of the Yemeni Journalists’ Syndicate (YJS) seems to have been lured over to the government’s side,” said Ghalib. “Before the beginning of the campaign against the newspapers, the syndicate issued a strange statement about national unity asking newspapers to commit to the ethics of journalism, it seems at the request of the government.”
The editors of Al-Share’, Al-Masdar, Al-Diyar, Al-Nida’, Al-Watani and Al-Ahali in a joint statement last Saturday condemned the Ministry of Information’s recent actions, which they described as “an explicit violation of the Constitution.”
They regretted that some members of the YJS’s board had written or allowed inflammatory propaganda against the independent press in government media, and called for their solidarity.
“Press freedom is dead,” replied Saeed Thabit, deputy chairman of the YJS. “But solidarity is weak. Whenever we call a meeting, only a few journalists turn up.”
“By establishing specialized courts for journalists, the government has put non-official journalism in a cage,” said Khaled Al-Anisi, one of the accused journalists’ defense lawyers. “It’s a tool to refrain press freedom. These kinds of courts only exist under dictatorships.”
The government has prevented the distribution of these newspapers, especially the popular daily newspaper Al-Ayyam. Since May 2, thousands of copies of Al-Ayyam have been confiscated from street kiosks in Sana’a and the southern cities.
At the end of the last week, Al-Ayyam supporters and security personnel prevented government forces surrounding the Aden-based newspaper from entering the building in clashes which left one person dead and at least two more injured.
“These actions are a clear effort to silence independent voices in Yemen,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “President Ali Abdullah Saleh needs to end this campaign of intimidation and censorship.”
Yemen is signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Arab Charter on Human Rights, both of which guarantee the right to freedom of expression, stresses HRW.
The Washington-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has strongly condemned the Yemeni government’s latest campaign against the country’s independent journalists.
“We urge President Saleh to order the release of our colleagues without delay and to bring this shameful campaign to uproot independent reporting to an end,” said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program _coordinator.
“Stifling freedom of expression runs counter to Yemen’s avowed commitment to democracy and reform,” he said.
The International Federation of Journalists fully supports the Yemeni Syndicate of Journalists (YJS), which is calling for an end to threats of violence against Al-Ayyam, the IFJ reported on its website.
