27th Weekly Protest Against the Closure of the independent Al Ayyam Newspaper
The civil rights protest also centered on the the kidnapping of journalist Mohammed al Maqaleh in August after he reported on a government air strike on a refugee camp in the northern Sa’ada province that killed 87.
The extreme clamp down on the press in Yemen coincides with the increasing frustration of the citizenry, which among other things, provides a greater pool of recruits for al Qaeda. The incredibly corrupt Yemeni government is quite inefficient at running the country and providing basic services but quite good at 1) mis-appropriating public funds and b) devising propaganda on the state controlled media.
Yemen Times In a similar activity, organized by the ‘Women Journalists Without Chains’ organization, in Sana’a, on Tuesday, Dec, 22, the organization protested for the 27th time to release the Al-Ayam newspaper that was confiscated and banned from publishing in April and release the disappeared journalist Mohamed Al-Maqaleh. Mohamed Al-Maqaleh disappeared in August.
It is worth mentioning that this year witnessed the biggest campaign against the press in Yemen that included the confiscation of around eight local newspapers and seizing international newspapers at the airport such as the Al-Quds newspaper.
