Yemen Drops to Among Bottom Ten Press Freedom Violators in the World
Among the latest violations by the Yemeni government was snatching Editor Mohammed al Maqaleh off the street over a month ago and continuing to hold him incommunicado. Another sorry designation, Yemen remains in last place globally on the ranking of gender equality.
Yemen Times SANA’A, Oct. 27 — With the latest public protest by journalists last Tuesday prevented by security, the Yemeni government has continued a trend it started in the beginning of this year against press freedom. The journalists were protesting the detention of colleagues.
“This year has been very bad for journalists,” says Saeed Thabet, secretary general of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has ranked Yemen’s press freedom at 167 out of 175 countries it has surveyed this year. This rank is twelve points lower compared to last year and by this not only is Yemen in the list of ten worst countries regarding press freedom in the world, it is also the only Arab country in this margin.
“Press freedom must be defended everywhere in the world with the same energy and the same insistence,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said as his organization issued its eighth annual world press freedom index.
The government keeps the media under its control. Censorship is frequently applied to subjects such as the presidency, state security and religion. But the most sensitive issue of all remains the rebellion in Saada, a region 200 km north of the capital, Sana’a.
Since the start of the war in 2004, several journalists have been imprisoned and papers confiscated because of reporting on this war. Most famous is Abdulkarim Al-Khaiwani who was sentenced to six years in prison on January 26, 2009 for “collaboration with the rebellion in the north,” by a special criminal court created to try terrorism cases. The journalist, a former editor of the newspaper Al-Shura and a contributor to independent media, was pardoned by President Ali Abdullah Saleh on March 14, 2009.
In his latest press briefing with the media last Tuesday, Minister of Information declined to comment on Yemen’s decline in press freedom’s index although he did mention that some diplomatic missions in Yemen praise the freedom available to media to the extent that some “diplomats” have expressed their surprise towards the extent of toleration the Yemeni government has shown towards some local press when they publish materials that is harmful “to the country’s best interest” or are violations of the Yemeni press code.
“We are proud that the international reports praise Yemen’s progress,” said Minister of Information Hassan Al-Lawzi during the press briefing.Internet Enemies
Yemen is one of the countries under surveillance regarding its internet censorship and is vulnerable to joining the 12 Enemies of the Internet. These countries, according to RSF, have all transformed their Internet into an Intranet in order to prevent their population from accessing ‘undesirable’ online information.
New media is very tightly controlled by the Ministry of Information, which in addition to monitoring the Internet, bans several mobile phone news services, including those by Nass Mobile or Bela Qoyod Mobile, on the grounds that text messages cannot be properly controlled. Service providers prevent some Internet users from getting access to local news sites.
TeleYemen (Y.Net), one of the country’s main providers, reserves the right to “report to the competent authorities on any use or attempted use of Y.Net services breaking the law of the Republic of Yemen”. The conditions of use of Y.Net also explain that “access to applications that allow transmission of video and audio files [...] represent an unreasonable use of the Internet network, that can affects its capacity, and is for this reason, banned”.
Yemen has been placed in the list of ten governments “under surveillance” for adopting worrying measures that could open the way to abuses.
“Not only is the Internet more and more controlled, but new forms of censorship are emerging based on the manipulation of information,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Orchestrating the posting of comments on popular websites or organizing hacker attacks is also used by repressive regimes to scramble or jam online content.”Middle East Region
Yemen, at 167 out of 174 countries, continued to sink towards the bottom of the rankings. Journalists pay for the government’s scorched-earth policies towards any form of separatism, not only in the north against the Zaydi rebels but also in the south. The Saleh government has drastically curtailed freedom of expression since May, imposing a news blackout on its military operations
