Armies of Liberation

because he’s destroying Yemen… Hamid has a reasonable plan, the VP steps in until early elections, but the issue of the electoral reform is still unresolved. But Hamid is right that the continuation of Saleh’s dictatorship is a failed strategy and progress requires some change, if not an administrative purge.

Hameed Al-Ahmar (the Son of Abdullah Al-Ahmar), who is a member of the Yemen Parliament as well as of the Islah party, gave an interview on 05/08/09 with Al-Jazeera.
He openly and honestly spoke of the condition and events in Yemen, and pointed the blame directly to the Yemeni president Ali Saleh for the country’s failure.
He also gave a direct message to the president to step down from the Presidency and and hand it over to his vice president Al-Ariani, while carrying out immediate elections for a new president.
He also accused the Yemeni President of defying the constitution by giving all the governmental and military posts to his sons and relatives, and not giving the Southerners a chance, thus accusing the president of being a traitor.Hameed condemned what is happening in the South of Yemen and what is being done to the Southerners from oppression and ill-treatment.
Hameed spoke very boldly about the situation, and when asked by the t.v presenter whether or not he was going to return to Yemen, he replied with a bold “Yes”! Explaining that his tribe is going to protect him, and will not let anything happen to him.

Reported: Rasha Rashed

His tribe is also Saleh’s tribe.

Update: Abdelmalik al Houthi is taking it as a Saleh-enduced call to dialog and responding with a bit of bluster.

Update: Al Sahwa has a write up:

Sahwa Net – Yemen’s opposition senior leader and Member of Parliament Hamid al-Ahmer has urged Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down, hand over power to his vice-president Abdu Rabo Mansour Hadi and set an appointment to elect a new president.

(Read on …)

Click here for the full story.

Sahwa Net – The human rights committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union has demanded Yemen’s parliament to provide explanations on the attempt of abducting the Member of Parliament Ahmed Saif Hashid and how to guarantee his safety.

The committee also asked the reasons behind the closing down of his website ( Yamanat) and the ban imposed on his newspaper (Almostaqila). It also asked to give reasons of preventing him of visiting jails.

The committee pointed out to defamations and crackdowns imposed on Hashid as a result of his work as a human rights activist.

The relationship between Yemen and China is quite strong and well established. Yemen balances its external relations in a similiar manner to its internal affairs. Yemen’s alliance with the US is offset by its relation with China, Russia, Iran, even Cuba. Yemen supports the Chinese position on Taiwan, and China never pressures Yemen on Human Rights issues, of course. First up, we have Yemen quite understanding of the Chinese crackdown on the Uighur’s and insisting its some conspiracy, which is the standard line for the Yemeni government regarding civil unrest in Yemen.

CNN: The July 5 riot in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is an internal affair of China, the Yemeni ambassador to China said on Wednesday. Yemen supports China’s efforts to defend its national sovereignty, to safeguard its social stability, and the people’s security and property, Abdulmalek Mualemi said in a written interview with Xinhua.

The riot in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, left 197 people dead and more than 1,680 injured….

“Considering the grave loss of lives and property caused by the violence, we believe the incident did not happen spontaneously as some people have claimed, instead, it was premeditated and organized,” he said.

AQAP may target Chinese interests in Yemen- report.

Bloomberg: Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb said it will target the 50,000 Chinese workers in Algeria and Chinese nationals and projects across northwestern Africa, said Stirling Assynt, which has offices in London and Hong Kong….“Some of these individuals have been actively seeking information on China’s interests in the Muslim world which they could use for targeting purposes,” Stirling Assynt said, adding locations included North Africa, Sudan, Pakistan and Yemen. Other militant groups may make similar threats and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula “could well target Chinese projects in Yemen,” according to the report.

More from Yemen Observer and al Sahwa.

Next: Chinese investment in Yemen, the overt kind. China needs to secure energy supplies and is one of Yemen’s main trading partners.

July 14 (Saba) – Yemen and the Chinese Commercial Vessel Building Company reviewed on Tuesday benefits and investment opportunities provided to investors in Aden Free Zone (AFZ).

Vice-chairman of the General Authority for Free Zones, and Head of the AFZ Abdul-Jalil al-Shuaibi re-invited, during his meeting with deputy general director of the company, Chinese investors to invest in Yemen, especially in establishing a factory for Chinese cars in the country.

Finally the Chinese massage parlors in Sana’a targeted by the Virtue and Vice Commission. The Chinese girls trafficked to Yemen as sex slaves were left crying on the street.

Al Arabyia: Yemeni religious police were out in force Tuesday in a major crackdown that saw many massage parlors and Chinese restaurants in the capital Sanaa shut down for allegedly promoting prostitution and vice.

The Yemeni religious police, modeled after Saudi Arabia’s Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, targeted popular tourist areas in Sanaa.

Authorities dragged Chinese women working in several spas and restaurants to the streets and sealed the businesses after posting a sign reading “closed by the authorities,” an eyewitness told Al Arabiya.

The number of Chinese restaurants and spas in the capital has increased significantly in the capital despite the fact that none of them have a legal work permits or Ministry of Health authorization, said an official who supervised the clampdown but spoke on condition of anonymity. (Read on …)

The Yemeni government announced several times that reconstruction aid would go first to “loyal” villages. Doesn’t sound very conciliatory to me. But it seems that even the pro-government personalities aren’t getting their due. The Houthis have said repeatedly that nothing is happening on the ground and all the announcements are propaganda. Ya think?

Yemen Observer

YEMEN – Four of Sa’adah governorate’s prominent ruling General People’s Congress party (GPC) members submitted their resignation to the President, the General Secretary, and the party’s block leader.

The three MPs, Othman Mujali, Abdulsalam Saleh Hashool Zabiah, Faiz Abdullah Saleh al-Ojiri, and Faisal Iraij, resigned from the GPC as a “first step”, according to the message which the three members signed and submitted to the president.

In a message to the President, the resigning members attributed their dissatisfaction to repeated failures to implement promises and the governorate’s development matrix in Sa’adah, “the negligence and lack of interest by the government in all of the events and the sufferings of the people of the area”, as well their belief in a government agency conspiracy against all of the governorate’s crucial issues. (Read on …)

Some women in Yemen believe they are subordinate to men. Some don’t. One time one of the “hard Muslims” as he called himself, told me that women have only half a brain. So I asked him if he ever met a smart woman and a stupid man, was it possible a woman’s half brain could be larger than a small brained man? He didn’t have an answer for that or the question, why would God give women talents if not to use them? He just started ranting he loved Osama bin Laden and offered to send me a book

State report on women issued
SANA’A, June 11 (Saba)- Woman National Committee (WNC) issued its recent state report on challenges facing women, empowering her and future tendencies to promote her in different fields, political, economic, cultural and social.

Granting the two sexes equal opportunities to get work based on equity in all issues included in the report.

Women limited and weak political participation, women parliamentarian representation, enacting with quota demand, woman lower participation in the work, illiteracy spread, increasing mortality percentage among woman and false conceptions on woman’s issues are the main issues the report talked about. (Read on …)

Its just an absolute zoo in every area. The primary problem in Yemen is the state does not obey its own laws.

Yemen Observer: The Commercial Court in the capital, headed by Judge Nabil Abdul Habib threatened to force the Parliament, represented by its Spokesman Yahya al-Ra’ai, to comply with the court sentence that orders the parliament to pay the amount of YR 340 million in rent and compensation to Mohammed Hassan al-Matari. The court, in a letter to the parliament, called for speedy implementation of the sentenced fine, and payment of rent without failure within the legal time limit of 45 days. (Read on …)

Since he returned from a trip to Geneva to the International Parliamentarians conference, independent MP Ahmed Saif Hashid’s website is blocked in Yemen and his newspaper was confiscated. He is excluded from Parliament. He has been sujected to religious incitement as well.

Recently he went to his car and it was out of service, but there was a taxi waiting right there, so he took it. The taxi driver took a detour and then said he was out of gas. After Hashed left the taxi, it drove away. Then Hashid was assaulted by an angry mob and someone pulled a gun. As he escaped on a bus, he was followed by the car. So he got into a different taxi. The car intercepted the taxi and the men tried to drag him out of the car and pulled a knife. He was punched and assaulted during a kidnapping attempt, but a crowd gathered. He knows who the people were but they are not arrested.

Hashed is a noted civil rights activist and often focuses on prisoner rights. He was awarded the Yemen Times Person of the Year award for his efforts.

Subject: Kidnapping and attacking

on May 29, at about 11pm, my sister called me by mobile to come to her home because she was sick. When I came out of my house, after about half an hour, I surprised that my car was broken-down. So, I was obliged to ride a taxi that had apparently been waiting for me.

On the way, however, the driver changed the direction of my destination after he has had a conversation on his mobile, claiming that it was a call from his family which lives in a nearby location, “it is an urgent matter and will not take more than a few minutes”, he said. While he veered about a kilometer away from the way, he stopped the taxi claiming that the petrol was over. It was a minute after I left when I see the taxi running away and about six or seven people, including a child, were approaching claiming that I molested the child. One of them pointed pistol at my face, and then the car of those offenders arrived. Then a person came out from his home nearby that place, the group confused. The person asked me about my identity and I gave them incorrect information which helped me, with the help of that person, to escape from the grip of that ambush.

I walked about 500 meters and I rode a bus which spent a distance of three kilometers; meanwhile, I saw that car still following me. So, I left the bus and rode another taxi, however, the car intercepted the taxi, a group of people came out to attack me, forcibly pulled me and tried to take me to the car. Moreover, one of them tried to stab me using a knife called, jumbia, some others also punched my head with lot of boxes in order to oblige me riding the car, but I resisted strongly. I appealed and screamed “they will kidnap me …I will die here …I will not ride the car “. The people gathered and intervened to prevent me from being kidnapping by the offenders’ car. The police was informed, then, it came to the scene where it detained the car and captured three of the attackers only, while neither the rest of the attackers, nor those who are behind were arrested by police.
(Read on …)

Amazing.

al Sahwa, Hadhramout – The Yemeni authorities arrested on Wednesday a top leader of Al-Haq party and the Joint Meeting Parties in Hadhramout province Yamin BaYamim, and attacked a member of parliament and the head of the Islah party Mohsin Basora.

For its part ,JMP condemned the acts, demanding the authorities to swiftly release Ba-Yamin.

Ba-Yamin and Basora were protesting in solidarity with journalists and eight independent newspapers that are facing a raid by the authorities due to their covering of the South incidents. They are also accused by the government of expressing views favorable to southern secessionists in their coverage of recent protests.

Yemen Post: President Saleh’s call for local ruling system has met the southern mobility leaders’ rejection and criticism. Moreover they doubted its credibility and considered it as sweet promises for external consumption.”We don’t believe in Saleh’s promise for local ruling system as it has no credibility,” said a field leader in what has become known as” southern mobility”, Nasser Al-Fadhli.

A paper by parliament member, Ahmad Saif Hashid, presented at the media women forum, on freedom of the audio & visual media.

The real situation of the media in Yemen is still a bad one and suffers great guardianship and forbidding either implicitly or explicitly. For example, possessing satellite channels is absolutely not allowed as well as the mobile short news messages service is subjected only to desire of the government, while about twenty electronic media news websites are veiled. The print media is overloaded with a great deal of materials that are prohibited, to be published, by disgraceful law. The Illegal acts committed against the press and journalists are beyond calculation and the worst is that such acts are practiced daily or semi-daily. (Read on …)

Also Parliament postpones vote on extending it’s term. The discussions on the constitutional ammendments on the proportional list etc. are in their infancy. It would be nice to rationalize the electoral system but hard to imagine it will occur. Nothing happened after the 2006 presidential election when there was a explicit agreement to reform and international input. If I were to lay odds, it would go 50% that a few minor revisions occur within the two year window, 20% chance of real reform and 30% that Yemen doesn’t see another election within the decade.

al Sahwa – Yemeni citizens were surprised on Saturday as they saw persons sell ballot boxes belonging to the Supreme Commission of Elections and Referendum. One seller said that he along with his friends vended some 22.000 boxes at various markets in Sana’a. He further pointed out that the demand of purchasing ballot boxes increase , particularly by farmers.

The SNACC is going to bring it to the President’s attention. There is no information if there are irregularities in the forms submitted. Also Parliament is asking for prosecution of officials who stole YR72 billion in 2007 through corruption

Yemen Observer: The Supreme National Authority for Combating Corruption (SNACC) is taking legal procedures to refer 3 ministers, 8 governors, and 40 ambassadors to the judiciary, pursuant to article 24 of the second chapter of Anti-Corruption Law, according to SNACC member Ahmed Qurhesh. (Read on …)

Ahmed Said Hashid Interviewed by Sarah Mersch for das Parliament. He’s a bright, couragous and patriotic man and addresses a wide range of topics:

Q1-Can you talk about parliamentary work in Yemen in terms of its constituents the electoral system that is adopted and the rights and duties of the elected parliament member?

Ans-There are two councils in Yemen, one is the elected House of Representatives, and the other is the Shura council which is wholly appointed by the president of the Republic. Both councils share a number of tasks with each other, such as approving plans of development, treaties and agreements concerning defense, alliance, reconciliation, peace, boundaries and other issues which the president considers as necessary to be discussed by both of the councils.

The House of Representatives is entitled to theoretically question the government and to withdraw the confidence the government has, but the reality is totally different, for the great majority of the government affiliated to the ruling party (Saleh’s General Peoples Congress), controls decision making in away that turns the parliament into a controlled rather than controlling agent.

The majority of the Parliament as well as its chairmanship protect any official figure from being investigated, however the violations which deserves questioning are clear. So throughout its life time, the parliament has never been subjected to any investigation.

The parliament presidency also avoids discussing any crucial reports that he committees of the House may submit. This can be demonstrated by the fact that the report on Yemeni child trafficking to neighboring countries and sexually abusing them ,was deliberately not discussed with the representatives, however, it had been completed since more than four years by the committee of the rights and freedoms, of which I am a member. As for the president of the Republic, he is nominated by the constitution as the higher leader of the armed forces and is fully authorized to do many tasks including releasing the House from its authorities, declaring the emergency situation if necessary and he can not be controlled by the Parliament unless he commits the great infidelity (that of the homeland) but such an authority remains, in all standards, a theoretical one. (Read on …)

News Yemen

A parliamentary committee in-charge of inspecting facts about detention of an MP over an official murder has demanded the MP release, but prosecution refuses.

MP Ahmad al-Barati, who is being held at the Central Prison in Taiz over the murder of director of Khadeer district Ahmad Mansour al-Shawafi, was not at the scene at that time as the General Attorney and head of Taiz Prosecution have claimed, said the committee in its report to the Parliament on Sunday. (Read on …)

In Yemen, appointing Sheiks to Parliament and local councils (and have no doubt they were appointed not elected) has had the result of tribalizing the government, rather than impacting tribal norms. al Sahwa

Sahwa Net – There are as many private prisons as literacy schools in Hodaida province , according to Alsahwa Newspaper correspondent Abdul-Hafeedh al-Hattami who managed to visit a number of these private prisons.

Al-Hattami said in a prolonged report that powerful sheikhs (chiefs of tribes), sons of lawmakers and local councils members imprison and torture people in Hodaida, the poorest governorate in Yemen and impose taxes on them .

” Five years ago , Badr Zohar from Al-Zohra district , Hodaida, was imprisoned in a jail which is called al-Mitiana in night to be extradited to his dad in day as a corpse” said al-Hattami indicating to the absence of judiciary or security or any public services in these remote areas .

Tribal chiefs who a majority of them are members of the ruling party , parliament or local councils practice repressions, tortures and all kinds of violations against their subjects, and loot their lands and prosperities, according to the report.

No not yet, al Motamar

On the other hand members of parliament received today a letter signed a number of religious men, t the forefront of who is the member of the Higher Body of the Islah Party, the President of Al-Eman University Sheikh Abdulmajid al-Zandani. The message mentioned that limiting girls marriage is a restraint f what the Sharia permitted , considering the amendment of the article in the law of personal status on determining marriage age by 17 years is unconstitutional a the Islamic Law id the source of legislations , according to the constitution of Yemen.

It is worth to mention that the amendment that the parliament has previously approved has been returned to parliament for more deliberations in response to proposal by MPs from the specialized committee and the Islah bloc.

Global Integrity finds a “huge” gap between the law and its implementation.

Yemen earned very weak scores across the board, from civil society and government accountability to business regulation and the rule of law. The country’s executive, judicial, and legislative accountability mechanisms are among the worst assessed in 2008.

Although there are strong anti-corruption laws on the book, the anti-corruption agency is ineffective. Furthermore, political financing is generally unregulated, while civil society organizations are ineffective in fighting corruption. The media, which is subject to political interference, also receives poor ratings. Several journalists have been arrested, harassed, or imprisoned for their corruption-related investigative stories. Government control over private radio is among the most draconian in the world.

Update: Oh Yay, they are referencing my articles as well as this website in the media section. What happens a lot is the original links to Yemeni papers go down and the only copy is here, which is one function of the site, to provide a historical data base for researchers and others by category. The Yemen Observer trashed their entire archives with the last website upgrade, so the only detailed searchable history in English is at the Yemen Times and here.

Update 2: A very detailed and accurate report with excellent footnotes in all categories.

Links at the main page include scorecard:

Yemen: Integrity Indicators Scorecard

Overall Score: 46 (+/- 2.81) – Very Weak

Category I Civil Society, Public Information and Media 36 Very Weak
I-1 Civil Society Organizations 47 Very Weak
I-2 Media 35 Very Weak
I-3 Public Access to Information 27 Very Weak

Category II Elections 46 Very Weak
II-1 Voting & Citizen Participation 62 Weak
II-2 Election Integrity 65 Weak
II-3 Political Financing 11 Very Weak

Category III Government Accountability 30 Very Weak
III-1 Executive Accountability 45 Very Weak
III-2 Legislative Accountability 22 Very Weak
III-3 Judicial Accountability 17 Very Weak
III-4 Budget Processes 35 Very Weak

Category IV Administration and Civil Service 44 Very Weak
IV-1 Civil Service Regulations 28 Very Weak
IV-2 Whistle-blowing Measures 21 Very Weak
IV-3 Procurement 57 Very Weak
IV-4 Privatization 70 Weak

Category V Oversight and Regulation 52 Very Weak
V-1 National Ombudsman 53 Very Weak
V-2 Supreme Audit Institution 47 Very Weak
V-3 Taxes and Customs 50 Very Weak
V-4 State-Owned Enterprises 48 Very Weak
V-5 Business Licensing and Regulation 63 Weak

Category VI Anti-Corruption and Rule of Law 66 Weak
VI-1 Anti-Corruption Law 100 Very Strong
VI-2 Anti-Corruption Agency 56 Very Weak
VI-3 Rule of Law 54 Very Weak
VI-4 Law Enforcement 54 Very Weak

Gee wouldn’t a normal press law, following up on the new legislation about the minimum marriage age, go a long way to appease the donors???? There’s seems to be good support in the parliament for the first draft. The second draft criminalizes a wide variety of topics important to an informed electorate and includes a six year jail term as the penalty for writing about anything important.

YT

None of this is reflected in the draft, which stipulates that the release of information should not damage national security, social peace, national unity, Yemen’s interests and its foreign relations, the national economy, public and private economic interests, or trade and financial interests. Any person seeking or publishing information prohibited by this draft shall be sentenced to six years in jail according to article 71. Such open-ended and loose terms make it difficult to decide what is prohibited and what is allowed, for anything at any time can be simply decided as being against the national interest of the country. Again, the time limit for accessing requested information has been put at ten days, but the draft stipulates that the limit can be extended to 60 days. That is a lot of time.

The National

SANA’A // A draft law on access to information that the Yemeni parliament is scheduled to debate this week has already drawn criticism from journalists and democracy activists who describe it as restricting press freedom.

“This draft law proposed by the government is authoritarian and aims to exercise more restrictions, as it prohibits the search for and publishing of information under several pretexts such as the protection of national security, national unity and the like,” said Marwan Damaj, the secretary general of Yemen Journalists Syndicate, a non-governmental organisation. (Read on …)

There is a very good book by IFES, it could be 2005, but everything in it is still true, and one article gives the stats of tribal Sheiks in Parliament and its high. In effect, the “democratic institutions” in Yemen reinforce patriarchal norms and undermine egalitarianism. al Sahwa notes a study that concludes many MP’s have a grammer school education, a result of this patronage system.

A working paper on the common measures of forming the parliamentary elite in Yemen has demonstrated that the ruling party , the General People Congress, always nominates incompetent candidates for parliament, pointing out that most of its parliament’s members do not hold secondary school certificates. (Read on …)

This is excellent. HOOD

SANA’A, Feb. 11 — Nojood, 10, Arwa, 9, and Reem, 13, are three girls who went through traumatizing ordeals after being forced into marriage by their families. The three girls’ stories have been an issue of debate in social sessions, conferences and the media. But most importantly the matter was discussed in Parliament, where members have finally approved setting the minimum age for marriage for both boys and girls at 17 years old.

The new law stipulates:

“No child under seventeen years of age is to be married, unless the marriage is seen in the best interest of the child by the judge. The girl’s guardian who violates this law will be penalized. The judge conducting the marriage has to present the marriage document within one month of the marriage at most to the concerned body and the marriage contract must include related documents such as birth certificate, dowry and identity cards. The guardian of either the wife or husband will be financially penalized if they do not register the marriage certificate within the mentioned period. No marriage is to be carried out at any age without the consent of the woman.” (Read on …)

a traitor to the resistance, they say

Sahwa Net – Nearly 60 Yemeni lawmakers demanded on Saturday the Yemeni government to not receive what they called the outgoing Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Yemen, pointing out that he betrayed the Palestinian issue and conspire against the national resistance.

The deputies also asked the government to not receive any Yemeni assistance to all those Palestinian officials who stood against the resistance.

Kuwaiti lawmakers had urged their government to bar the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from an Arab economic summit taking place in the Gulf state in protest at his stance over Israel’s offensive in Gaza.