Traditionally the US allied National Security under Ammar Saleh has perpetrated most attacks on journalists and activists and may have the lead again in personal threats and assault against the democracy activists now.

al Sahwa: Reporters Without Borders has condemned the arrest of Suhail TV cameraman Ahmad Firas by soldiers form Daylami airbase on the afternoon of 12 August as he was driving with his wife and children, who were released a few hours later.

The same military airbase previously arrested Al-Sahwa reporter Yahi Al-Thalayan and held him for 10 days before letting him go.

Mohamed Ayda, the Sanaa bureau chief of the US Arabic-language TV station Al-Hurra, was the target of an attack on the evening of 10 August by several unidentified men who tried to stab him with curved janbiya daggers. He was rescued by several passers-by. This was not the first time that he has been the target of threats and attacks.

Reporters Without Borders urges the Yemeni authorities to investigate these constant attacks on the freedom of journalists and the media and to impose appropriate sanctions so that the media’s work is not obstructed by members of the security forces or by groups that use violence.

It further denounced the attempted assassination of deputy information minister Abdu Al-Ganadi. A bomb exploded outside his home on the morning of 18 August without causing any casualties.

Yemen main opposition parties, the Joint Meeting Parties, have condemned the attempted assassination, calling the Yemeni authorities to investigate on the incident and bring the involved into justice.

Hodiedah: In an interview with Marib Press, 12 year old “Hanadi” said she was forced into marriage by her impoverished father to pay a debt. Her husband tried repeatedly to rape her, her tears were no deterrent, and he threatened to beat her. After three days, he drugged by her with sleeping pills in her juice. She woke up bruised, confused and bleeding. The child ran away and is currently in the Hodiedah CID, appealing to Human Rights Organizations to save her. A medical exam proves the child was violently raped. The father and husband were interviewed by police. The father asserts the husband promised not to engage in intercourse until she was older. The husband says he didn’t touch her.

“12 year old Hanadi launched a distress call to the Ministry of Human Rights and human rights organizations demanding urgent intervention and to direct the security agencies to arrest the looter of her childhood and to investigate him and refer him to the judiciary.”

The issue is where is she going to go live. And its questionable if either the father or husband will be charged with a crime. There is no law in Yemen designating a minimum marriage age. Without publicity, she might have to go back. If she does not return to her husband, the father’s debt is still in force because she was basically sold like a slave. Children are frequently used as chattel. At least half of all marriages in Yemen occur before 16. Unsurprisingly, Yemen’s youthful female revolutionaries are quite determined to overthrow the system.

Related Update: “The Organizational Committee of the People’s Youth Revolution condemns the resumption of U.S. military support for the remnants of the (Saleh) family regime and the use of U.S. weapons in the killing of peaceful civilians and puts a big question mark attached to the U.S. contradictory positions.”

FACT SHEET: President Obama Directs New Steps to Prevent Mass Atrocities and Impose Consequences on Serious Human Rights Violators

“The United States is committed to working with our allies, and to strengthening our own internal capabilities, in order to ensure that the United States and the international community are proactively engaged in a strategic effort to prevent mass atrocities and genocide. In the event that prevention fails, the United States will work both multilaterally and bilaterally to mobilize diplomatic, humanitarian, financial, and—in certain instances—military means to prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities.”

–National Security Strategy of the United States, May 2010

President Obama is committed to strengthening the United States Government’s ability to prevent mass atrocities and serious human rights violations. In 2010, he created the first-ever White House position dedicated to preventing and responding to mass atrocities and war crimes. And in Kyrgyzstan, Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, Sudan, and elsewhere, this Administration has prioritized the protection of civilians and the prevention of mass atrocity and serious human rights violations, and employed a wide range of economic, diplomatic, and other tools in service of those ends.

Today, President Obama is directing a comprehensive review to strengthen the United States’ ability to prevent mass atrocities. The President’s directive creates an important new tool in this effort, establishing a standing interagency Atrocities Prevention Board with the authority to develop prevention strategies and to ensure that concerns are elevated for senior decision-making so that we are better able to work with our allies and partners to be responsive to early warning signs and prevent potential atrocities. Today he is also issuing a proclamation that, for the first time, explicitly bars entry into the United States of persons who organize or participate in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and serious violations of human rights.

The Presidential Directive on Mass Atrocities, Presidential Study Directive-10 (PSD-10), is innovative and significant in several respects:

Presidential Prioritization. In PSD-10, President Obama finds that: “Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America.” He directs agencies to participate in a comprehensive assessment, led by the National Security Advisor, of how best to accomplish this national security imperative.
Organization Matters. The President notes that, “66 years since the Holocaust and 17 years after Rwanda, the United States still lacks a comprehensive policy framework and a corresponding interagency mechanism for preventing and responding to mass atrocities and genocide.” The President orders the creation of an interagency Atrocity Prevention Board within 120 days from today so as to coordinate a whole-of-government approach to engaging “early, proactively, and decisively.”
Full Toolbox. The President rejects the idea that, in the face of mass atrocity, our options are “limited to either sending in the military or standing by and doing nothing.” He instructs his Administration to undertake a 100-day review – to take an “inventory” of the full range of economic, diplomatic, and other tools available to U.S. policymakers; to develop the appropriate governmental organization to try to ensure early and less costly preventive action; to improve the collection and processing of indicators of mass atrocity; to provide a channel for dissent to be raised during a crisis; and to appropriately train and prepare our diplomats, armed services, development professionals, and others.
A Global Responsibility. The directive recognizes that preventing mass atrocities is a responsibility that all nations share. Often other countries are better positioned than the United States to respond to particular crises or potential atrocities. Recognizing that the burden for preventing mass atrocities must be appropriately shared by other countries, the directive calls for a strategy for engaging key regional allies and partners so that they are prepared to accept greater responsibility for preventing and responding to crimes against humanity.

The President’s proclamation makes two key contributions:

Closing gaps. The United States has long sought to ensure that our country does not become a safe haven for human rights violators or those responsible for other atrocities. Existing U.S. law renders certain human rights violators inadmissible to the United States – such as participants in genocide, torture, extra-judicial killings, or certain violations of religious freedom. However, before today, the United States did not have an explicit bar to admission on the basis of participation in serious violations of human rights or humanitarian law or other atrocities that do not otherwise fit into those categories specifically enumerated in the Immigration and Nationality Act. This proclamation fills this gap by expanding the grounds for denial of entry into the United States to cover a broader array of recognized violations of international humanitarian law and international criminal law, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. The proclamation will also cover participants in serious human rights violations, such as prolonged arbitrary detention, forced disappearances, slavery, and forced labor, as well as participants in widespread or systematic violence against civilians based on ethnicity or other grounds.
New deterrent. By enumerating these grounds for denying admission to the United States, policymakers will have a new tool to deter would-be organizers of atrocities, serious human rights violations, and related abuses. The President’s proclamation empowers the United States to warn groups that have carried out, or may be about to carry out, serious human rights violations or grave atrocities that their conduct falls within explicit standing bans on admission to the United States. As such, we will be able to more effectively shame those who are organizing such conduct. The proclamation also bans admission to the United States for those who are complicit in organizing these abuses – not just those who carry them out. As such, it allows the United States to act before planned abuses and atrocities metastasize into actual ones.

The proclamation is being issued pursuant to the President’s authority under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which authorizes the President to suspend entry into the United States of aliens whose entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” There are currently seventeen 212(f) proclamations in effect, including Proclamation 8342 (2009), which suspends entry to foreign government officials responsible for failing to combat human trafficking, and Proclamation 7750 (2004), which suspends entry of persons engaged in or benefiting from corruption.

Hurriyatsudan:
Statement issued by a number of Yemeni intellectuals and activists on the legitimacy of the civil revolution

“Zindani approach” to the oppression of Islam and the abuse of the revolution
With the dawn of the revolution in the arena of popular youth change in Sanaa, the Zindani and his current hard-line jihadi incitement against the state civil. Like this current horror inside Yemen and the Arab and international, pushing large numbers of the University of radical faith to the scene.

Such as the emergence of “Abdul Majeed Zindani” and “Abdul Wahab al-Dailami,” and “pro-Muhammad” and “Mohammed al-Hazmi,” and “Arif Sabri” – they are the most important advocates of atonement – a state of fear and anxiety among the sons and daughters of the revolution. This trend is from Kafr the south and shares in the leadership of the war 94 m criminal, and shares his edicts hellish in the strife and wars, especially in Saada and the central regions, and in the Arab environment, the Quarth in Saudi Arabia extends to a rift Brotherhood, led by Faisal Darwish and later Juhayman Otaibi in the Haram al-Sharif, which Zindani was a Mhalleha.
The emergence of the Taliban in the courtyard of the face of change in Sanaa in the presence of armed Zindani and his famous who wanted to exchange the path of revolution by force from the first moment, where he claimed that the revolution is to establish a caliphate state. Arif Sabri, followed by saying it in order to establish the Islamic Caliphate; which left an impact terrifying and frightening at the same, Venmazj the Taliban in Afghanistan and the jihad in Somalia and the destruction of Iraq’s sectarian, Egypt, Algeria and other bleeding puncture the conscience and heart. The civilized world believes in this thinker face a threat to international peace and security, which is why drop support and international support for the Yemeni revolution.
And refuse Zindani known recklessness, recklessness, but insist on calling irrationality in restoring the Caliphate, which stood against the Islamic Ottoman Onmozjha best Muslim scholars in Istanbul, Baghdad and Damascus, Egypt and Yemen. The Justice and Development Party Turkish Brighter and conscious alternative to the alternative of civil and democratic civil state.
The atone Zindani claimants a new constitution and stresses bearing down on the revolutionary legitimacy, replacing them with the legitimacy of “the influential people,” Force dictatorships extinct in the country, all Arab and Islamic history, having contributed opinions and speeches and statements Zindani in the incitement and calls to strife and turmoil. Here he is again wants to Weather horns in the peaceful revolution which represents salvation and redemption of approaches mined discrimination, exclusion, discord and war Ataiwaúfah and religious; Fajtabh the transfer site News Yemen and the newspaper first confirms insist on rejecting revolutionary legitimacy, and impose its guardianship of the revolution as a lawmaker in God’s name and a spokesman for the truth religious, ignorant that there is no religious authority in Islam and not Islam in divination, and religious clergy in Europe has gone a long time; It is not known since the time of the caliphate of Islam Al Rashidiya religious authority. Valkhalafah held under civil and sell it in every respect, the ruler of all the faces civil as Imam Muhammad Abdu, and Rhabna in Islam. Imam Jafar Sadiq and Imam Zaid bin Ali and Abu Hanifa, Imam Malik bin Anas Asbahi and al-Layth ibn Sa’d and Tabari see honest that their fatwas opinion could be right and wrong, but Zindani, is competent fatwas, or try to understand his religion, but by calling for partisan warfare takfiri severe discrimination between men and women and the Sunni and Shiite Muslims and others, views the provisions of the definitive divine no falsehood can approach from before or from behind. Valzendani finds that claimants are anti-Islam to change the constitution because they want equality and genuine democracy.
The call for this Zindani At this very moment, and both came from him or else they are in the mill of anti-Islam and freedom.
The Reform Party, which represents a Zindani its symbols, is required to determine a clear position and clear of calls and activity Zindani and his team threatened the revolution and the crippling of the victory. And the terrible of the revolution in its own key. The Reform and the Joint Commission and dialogue are required to condemn such a dark power that drives all people to be afraid of the Taliban, Yemen. And on the squares in Yemen to win legitimacy for the revolutionary and beyond word and deed attempts custody of the revolution or to speak on its behalf by the enemies of the revolution, freedom, dignity and equality.
Indeed, the position of Al-Azhar in his support and the pro-democratic civil state the best reply to the priesthood Zindani and his followers.
He saw the Sheikh of Al-Azhar did not know that Islam is not in the legislation nor his or her own history and what is known in other cultures, the state religious priesthood .. But leave the management of their people with the requirement that the overall principles of Islamic law is the main source of legislation .. And to ensure that the followers of other monotheistic religions resort to rituals.

Alastbdadan religious and political are interdependent does not stop one from the other as seen enlightened thinker Abdel Rahman Al. And advances locked in the atonement does not know the tolerance of Islam does not recognize the legitimacy of the revolution, and realize that all the constitutions of the civilized world, including the Yemeni Constitution is the people are the source of power and its owner.

Thus it is clear that the religious and political Alvesadin go hand in hand and feed the each other. But the obedient servant of the religious is a political confiscate any religious freedom. The assault on the sacred rights in the name while the people want

Mareb Press reports Tawwakol Karman’s house was trashed, and her brother kidnapped. She accused the commander of the Republican Guard, Brigadier General Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, and his cousin, Ammar Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, Undersecretary of the National Security Agency, of being behind the raid and looting her home, studio and the Organization of Women Journalists Without Chains. Her brother, the poet Tariq Abdel-Salam Kerman, disappeared four days ago in Taiz, and Karman confirmed that he had been kidnapped by the National Security Agency, after he announced his joining the People’s Revolution for the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

al Sahwa: Reporters Without Borders condemns Al-Sahwa.net correspondent Yahia Al-Thanaya’s abduction at a checkpoint near the Al-Dailami air-base, a few kilometres outside Sanaa, on the night of 19 June, just a few days after he reported that the government was illegally holding activists at a secret detention centre within the base. Reporters Without Borders calls for his immediate release.

The editor of the opposition weekly Al-Wahdawi, Ahmed Sayeed Nasser, was threatened on 16 April by a phone caller who accused him of insulting the president and his family in various articles. The caller also said some of the newspaper’s reporters could be in danger as a result of the publication of documents shedding light on North Yemen President Ibrahim Al-Hamdi’s assassination in 1977.

Hassan Baoum is the subject of a new letter by HRW . Leader of the Southern (pro-independence) Movement Hassan Bauom and his son Fawaz have been missing since February, in the custody of the Yemeni authorities.

Authorities had detained Hassan and Fawaz Baoum three previous times since 2007 on charges that included planning illegal demonstrations and instigating riots. After the first two arrests, each was convicted but released on time served, a relative said. Hassan Baoum was detained for three months in 2007, for six months in 2008, and again from November 2010 to January 2011. Fawaz Baoum was detained with his father in 2007 and 2010, and separately in 2009. Relatives said that at some points during those detentions, Hassan Baoum was held incommunicado and without medical assistance…In 2008, Human Rights Watch documented a broad pattern of enforced disappearances in Yemen, and found that the government’s Political Security and National Security agencies played key roles. In 2009, Human Rights Watch documented security forces’ unlawful methods against the Southern Movement, including the use of lethal force against unarmed demonstrators and the detention of hundreds of the group’s suspected members and leaders for periods as long as six months, often without judicial review or contact with lawyers.

Human Rights Watch has confirmed the deaths of 167 people since February in attacks by state security forces or armed pro-government assailants – often facilitated by security forces – on peaceful anti-Saleh protesters.

Beeb: The UN has added two groups in Yemen and two in Iraq to its annual list of those recruiting or abusing children during armed conflicts.

During Yemen’s recent civil war, as many as 15% of the pro-government militia and 20% of the Huthi rebels were made up of children, the UN says.

Even though that conflict was now over, nobody knew where the children were, said a UN special representative.

The annual report said children were involved in warfare in 22 countries.

“2010 proved another tragic year for children in conflicts all over the world,” said Radhika Coomaraswamy, Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict

The Obama admin exempted Yemen from legal repercussions for the use of child soldiers.

Yemen: Stop Using Children in Armed Forces HRW: Child Soldiers Recruited by Army Now Deployed by Opposition

(New York) – Child soldiers recruited by the Yemeni army are now being used by a breakaway unit to protect anti-government protesters, Human Rights Watch said today. The United States and other governments should call for an immediate end to the use of children as soldiers or in other security forces, whether for the Yemeni government or the opposition.

Human Rights Watch has encountered dozens of armed soldiers who appeared to be younger than 18 years old in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, since February 2011, when protesters began demonstrating against President Ali Abdullah Saleh. On April 12 Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 soldiers in Sanaa who gave their ages as 14, 15, and 16, and said they had been serving in the army for one to two years. All were members of the Yemeni army’s First Armored Division, whose commander, Gen. Ali Muhsin, defected to the opposition in March and has deployed his troops to protect anti-government protesters.

“The Yemeni government has for too long placed children at grave risk by deploying child soldiers on the field of battle,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “President Saleh’s opponents should not perpetuate the problem by using children for security on the field of protest.”

The 20 child soldiers told Human Rights Watch they had been recruited to fight in the government’s intermittent conflict with Huthi rebels in northern Yemen. Some of the children said they had initially fought in a pro-government militia but were subsequently transferred to the First Armored Division, which led the campaign against the Huthis. Each of the child soldiers carried an AK-47 assault rifle and a handgun and wore a First Armored Division uniform.

In separate interviews, six officers from the First Armored Division told Human Rights Watch that the unit allows recruitment of 15-year-olds and occasionally makes “exceptions” by recruiting younger children.

The government responded to the popular uprising that began in February by deploying military units. On March 21, three days after government forces stood by as assailants shot dead dozens of peaceful protesters in Sanaa, General Muhsin defected to the opposition along with his division. Since then, Mushin has positioned his troops to protect anti-government protesters in the capital from further attacks by government forces and loyalists.

This use of children to provide armed security places them at grave risk. The Convention on the Rights of the Child recognizes the right of children to be protected from performing any work that is likely to be harmful to their health or their development.

Human Rights Watch has documented the Yemeni army’s use of child soldiers in its fight against the Huthis. Recruiting children under age 15 to serve in the armed forces is a war crime. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, which Yemen ratified in 2007, establishes 18 as the minimum age for any conscription, forced recruitment, or direct participation in hostilities.

On April 12 Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Open Society Foundations, and World Visionwrote to US President Barack Obama criticizing the administration’s failure to secure progress in ending the use of child soldiers by Yemen and three other governments receiving US military aid – the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, and Sudan. Obama in October 2010 signed a waiver allowing those four countries to continue receiving military assistance despite their use of child soldiers, in violation of the US Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008. That law requires the US to withhold certain types of military assistance from countries that recruit or use child soldiers in government forces, or government-supported paramilitaries or militias, in violation of international standards.

Human Rights Watch urged the US to suspend military assistance to Yemen immediately unless the Yemeni government agrees to negotiate an action plan with the United Nations to end the use of child soldiers and to allow a visit by the UN’s Special Representative on children and armed conflict. The US approved more than $168 million in military assistance to Yemen last year, of which an estimated $35 million would be prohibited under the Child Soldiers Prevention Act.

Human Rights Watch has also called on donor governments to suspend military assistance to Yemen until government security forces and loyalists stop assaulting peaceful protesters and authorities conduct credible investigations into the attacks, in which at least 87 people have died since mid-February.

“Donor governments should make sure their weapons and ammunition are not being used against peaceful protesters, and that children aren’t doing the shooting and dying,” Stork said. “The donors should be pressing the government and opposition to get the guns out of children’s hands.”

State.gov: The main government human rights abuses included severe limitations on citizens’ ability to change their government due to, among other factors, corruption, fraudulent voter registration, administrative weakness, and close political-military relationships at high levels. Arbitrary and unlawful killings, politically motivated disappearances, and reports of torture and other physical abuse accompanied the use of excessive force against civilians in internal conflict. Prisons and detention centers were in poor condition, and some private, largely tribal, ones operated without legal authorization or control. Arbitrary arrest and detention, sometimes incommunicado, and denial of fair public trial were widespread. Official impunity was common. The government restricted civil liberties, including freedoms of speech and of the press, including access to the Internet, peaceful assembly, and religious freedom. The judiciary was weak, corrupt, and lacked independence. Official corruption and lack of government transparency were severe problems. International humanitarian groups estimated more than 300,000 persons were internally displaced as a result of the Saada conflict. Pervasive discrimination against women continued, as did early marriage, child labor, and child trafficking. Discrimination on the basis of religion, sect, and ethnicity was common. Workers’ rights were restricted.