MEDIA-YEMEN: New Struggle for Independence Begins

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nabil Sultan

SANA'A, Sep 1 2005 (IPS) - The abduction of the chief editor of a weekly has brought journalists together in a new struggle to protect their independence.

Al-Wasat editor Jamal Amer was abducted last Thursday for six hours by a group of armed men. Amer said after his release that he was taken away in a vehicle with military number plates.

He said he was taken from outside his house in Sana’a to a place in the nearby mountains where he was beaten up and told to stop writing against officials.

His weekly has been attacking several government officials over corruption. In one article he named the sons and daughters of senior officials sent to study in Britain, the United States, Canada and Malaysia despite orders from President Ali Abdallah Saleh to end such ‘scholarships’.

Two days after his abduction Thursday, the offices of the Associated Press and the al-Nida weekly were raided. The intruders stole files, documents, computers and other equipment.

Director of the AP office Ahmad al-Haj said that the office was opened with a key and that guard Mohammed Abdel Badir, a Somali, had disappeared. “The guard told me earlier that he was asked by an anonymous caller to work as an agent if he wanted to be safe,” al-Haj said in a statement.

Chief editor of al-Nida weekly Sami Ghalib said security forces raided his office and confiscated documents and computers.

The ministry of interior denied involvement of security forces. But the police have not tracked down the abductors and intruders.

The latest incidents follow months of harassment of journalists by way of arbitrary detentions and libel actions.

But following the events last week, the Yemen Journalists Syndicate decided to set up a ‘coalition of civil society advocacy of rights and freedoms..’ Human rights activist Rana Ghanim was elected coordinator of the coalition. Mahmoud Yasin was named reporter.

The coalition includes also chairman of the journalists syndicate Mahbob Ali, member of parliament Faisal Abu Rass, and chair of the Yemeni women journalists group Rahma Hujaira.

The coalition is looking for support within Yemen and from outside. “We will start with the local NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and then Arab and foreign ones to pressure official bodies to end such practices against press, and to support all civilian rights,” Yasin told IPS.

Chief editor of the independent Raay (opinion) weekly Mohammad Jasar said: “We have been wrong when we said that 2004 was the worst year for journalism in Yemen. The coming years are expected to bring more suffering for journalists, particularly 2006 when presidential elections will be held.”

But there are journalists who defend the government. Editor-in-chief of the Yemen News Agency (Saba) Nasr Taha Mustafa said in a statement that the regime “does not deny press freedom, and journalists enjoy a wide range of freedom to criticise.”

Mustafa, who has put out several reports against officials said that “some colleagues, unfortunately, mix up the public and the personal. Our law allows journalists to criticise the conduct of any official, even the president, but not personally.”

In Britain the judiciary often passes sentences against journalists “but nobody says that is an attack on press freedom,” Mustafa said. “So why say that about a country like Yemen?”

The recent incidents must be condemned, he said, “but why do our colleagues accuse the authorities of having a hand in such events without evidence?”

Former editor of al-Shoura weekly Abdul-Karim al-Khiwani who was detained for seven months for publishing articles against the regime disagrees.

“Journalists did not misuse the freedom guaranteed by the constitution and laws,” he said in a statement. “What happened is that journalists have begun to identify corrupt officials.” Earlier authorities faulted journalists for alleging corruption without specific facts. But this time Amer had published precise information based on documents, he said.

The recent attacks on the media were a reaction from corrupt individuals, Al-Khiwani and other journalists say. “The free press is talking about how the government should lead the country while officials are worried about who should lead the country,” Al-Khiwani said. “They are afraid, so they are resorting to arbitrary detentions, defamation actions and disappearances.”

Rahma Hujaira believes some good may come of these actions. “Every time journalists suffer from unprecedented ways of mistreatment, the number of journalists who strongly resist such treatment rises.”