Yemen to Crack Down on Internet Cafes
Just shutting down all forms of communications with the outside world.
Yemen Times SANA’A, June 24 – In an attempt to safeguard the morality of Yemen’s youth, the Ministry of Culture will step up its campaign to search internet cafes and CD sellers without warning.
The move is to prevent youth, especially school children, from watching pornographic material on the internet, the ministry says.
Instructions given to Internet café owners include obtaining a license for opening the café, and ensuring computer screens are not set up either facing the wall or separated by partitions. They are also asked not to allow school students to use Internet during school hours if they are wearing school uniform.
Yemenis between 15-35 years are the most common users in Internet cafes, and about 70 percent of young Internet users in Yemen search for pornography, according to a government survey in 2007.
Internet cafés play an important role in access to the web for many Yemenis, since Internet service at home is cost-prohibitive.
Although the number of Internet subscribers rose from 295,624 to 206,909 between and 2009, according to the Public telecommunications Corporation, Internet use in the country is still relatively low, with less than one to two percent of the population using the Net, depending on studies.
Both Internet service providers in Yemen are 100 percent government-owned, but TeleYemen is managed by a French company.
The Ministry of Telecommunication controls what is accessed on the Internet, both by banning websites and keywords, and by the regular campaigns by Ministry of Culture to internet centers to observe the contents of the server commuters.
Internet center administrators also have their own censorship tools, such as software which alerts them when someone is on a pornography website.
One of these programs, for example, shows a special icon next to the culprit’s computer number on the administrator’s computer screen. The latter can then decide whether to ignore the alert, or ask the user to stop what he is doing, which most of the time leads to losing that customer.
