MEDIA-RELIGION: Yemen Journalists Fight Cartoon Crackdown

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nabil Sultan

SANA'A, Feb 22 2006 (IPS) - The cartoons controversy has taken a new turn in Yemen with a plea by four jailed journalists that they re-published the cartoons in defence of Islam.

The Yemen Observer has pointed out that it re-published the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad stamped with a thick black cross in order to register anger over them, while showing them to readers. The cartoons first appeared in a Danish newspaper Sep. 30.

That defence has not been convincing either for the government or for religious leaders. They say the paper should have shown its opposition to the cartoons by written arguments, and not through reproduction.

Four journalists, Muhammad Al-Asadi, managing editor of the Yemen Observer, Akram Sabra, managing editor of Al-Hurriya (Freedom), a reporter with Al-Hurriya, Yahya Al-Abed, and editor-in-chief of Al-Rai al-Am (Public Opinion) Kamal al-Alofi are under arrest.

“These journalists have published cartoons that insulted Islam and the Prophet Muhammad,” prosecutor Muhammad Sahl told the court.

Prime Minister Abdul-Qader Ba-Jammal has meanwhile revoked the licence of the three newspapers.

“I am very surprised by this development,” Al-Asadi of the Yemen Observer said in a message sent to journalists. “They want to close the newspaper in response to our efforts and continuous calls for understanding, tolerance and accepting the apologies of the Danish editors and people. We have received dozens of apologies from Denmark.”

“We are totally against the publication of cartoons but at the same time we should accept apologies and call for dialogue,” Akram Sabra of Al-Hurriya told IPS. “Danish people are innocent. Our religion stops us from blaming someone for a mistake made by someone else.”

At a solidarity meeting with the three weekly newspapers, journalists condemned the measures taken by the prosecutor and the Prime Minister.

“If there are mistakes, measures should be taken through the judiciary,” said first deputy of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate Saeed Thabit.

Despotic regimes have taken advantage of the wave of anger against the cartoons in Arab and Islamic countries in order to settle accounts with media that criticises them, Thabit said.

The government is not acting out of concern for the people, Sabra said. “If they had been concerned about people, they would have responded to their calls when they rose against hunger in July 2005, and not confronted them with live ammunition.”

Journalist Muhammad Al-Ghubari says the journalists have been condemned by the government, not by the public. “There is always coordination between the prosecution and the government against journalists.”

“If there was public anger against the three papers, it was caused by the government,” said member of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate Council Sami Ghalib. The government was hitting out at journalists in the name of the Prophet, he said.

The official daily Al-Thawra and two official websites have published condemnations against the journalists.

Preachers in Ibb and Al-Baydha governorates said at last Friday’s prayers that life imprisonment would be too lenient a punishment for those who re-published the Danish images in Yemen or in other Arab capitals. They have called for execution of the journalists.

The lives of the journalists will be at serious risk if official publications and imams continue to provoke people, the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate says. In fact it is the imams making such calls who are disgracing the Prophet, it says.

Several Islamic scholars and academics have said that re-publishing the caricatures was meant to scorn those who disgraced the Prophet, but said the newspapers were wrong in their method.

According to statements from them at frequent demonstrations in capital Sana’a, re-publishing the caricatures called for a reprimand, not punishment.