Updated: Thomas Freidman Misses the Mark on Yemen
One of the funnier or perhaps pathetic things about Freidman’s article was his praise of the vibrant Yemen Observer newsroom, when it is the primary English language propaganda machine of the Yemeni government. One of the most despicable was his omission of any mention of the kidnapping and torture of editor Mohammed al Maqaleh and the fact that the Bahsraheels and hundreds of others are likely undergoing the same depraved treatment. Considering Freidman who didn’t meet with, perhaps he’s just an ignoramus. But the information is easily available on open source including the fact that Yemeni civil society is regularly cloned, bribed, threatened and assaulted, somewhat tempering their message and work product. Maybe Freidman thinks he can accomplish more by self-censoring and sucking up to the Yemeni government, but its been unsucessfully tried before by some rather impressive people. The US alliance with Saleh is akin to the US alliance with Saddam while he was gassing the Kurds.
Letters to the International Herald Tribune
Yemen’s Human Rights RecordThomas Friedman rightly praises the emergence of strong civil society organizations in Yemen, (“Postcard from Yemen,” Views, Feb. 8), but he ignores the repression they suffer under the Saleh administration.
If Muhammad al-Maqalih, the online editor of an opposition publication, had tried last autumn to send a postcard, for example, it would have been postmarked from an unknown prison. Government agents, not Al Qaeda, snatched him on Sept. 17, 2009, after he accused Yemen’s military of war crimes against Houthi rebels. After denying to Human Rights Watch in December that it held him, the government is now prosecuting al-Maqalih before the state security court.
The Yemeni government has brazenly “disappeared” and unfairly prosecuted critical journalists and academics and quashed civil society efforts to promote the rule of law.
The United States praises Yemen for its counter-terrorism efforts, but glosses over its human rights abuses, which generate local support for Al Qaeda.
Christoph Wilcke, Munich
Senior Middle East researcher, Human Rights Watch
Update: OK Friedman gets one right when he notes the Yemeni public schools including grammar schools are biased toward the Wahabbi philosophy. As I noted in 2005, in the diverse religious environment of Yemen, the state’s support of Salafism in schools creates friction and is one of the main reasons the Houthi rebels have always demanded the right to run their own schools.
