H.E. Abdullah Ali Saleh
President
Office of the President
Al-Qasr Street
Sana’a
Republic of Yemen
Your Excellency:
The Overseas Press Club of America joins other international news organizations deeply alarmed by your continued attacks on Yemen’s independent press. We ask you to cease and desist in all manner of these attacks.
The latest violation of free speech by your government was the sentencing of two journalists to prison terms for writing articles offensive to the state.
- On January 17, Moaz Al-Ashihabi, a journalist for the Al Thaqafieh newspaper, was sentenced by a Special Court to a one-year prison term for writing an article that “infringes on the Islamic faith”
- On January 16, Anisa Othman of the weekly Al-Wasat newspaper was sentenced to three months for writing an article judged offensive to Your Excellency.
Both journalists were banned from writing for one year. The sentences by a Special Court for Journalists, established in May 2009, confirmed fears of journalists and independent citizens that the court would be used to punish rather than act impartially as a referee in press-government disputes. As OPC noted in an earlier letter, the court was formed after your government suspended eight leading newspapers in May, 2009.
Sentences of these individual journalists follow a series of attacks on the press in recent months–attacks that appear to be part of a general pattern of restraints and intimidation that has escalated in recent years.
On January 4, your police and security forces laid siege to the daily newspaper Al-Ayyam’, which had been suspended from publication since last May, but which continued to publish on-line until September. Shots were fired to disburse journalists and supporters of the newspaper who were conducting a sit-in at the newspaper’s compound. According to reports by an eye witness who is a lawyer, nine persons were injured and two may have been killed. (The deaths were not confirmed.)
In recent earlier incidents, noted in our May 21, 2009 letter to you:
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Delivery trucks of Al Ayyam were seized and several burned, and two influential bloggers, Yahya Bamahfud, former editor of the Hadharamaut news site in the city of Mukalla, and Fuad Rashid, editor of the Mukalla Press Web site, were both arrested in security raids in which their computer equipment and documents were seized.
We are well aware of global concerns that Yemen is a terrorist hot spot. As we at the OPC noted in our May letter there are legitimate reasons for your government to have a high alert concern about national security. But silencing the press does not make your country safer. On the contrary, it generates rumors and alarm about the state of your government.
We urge you to immediately countermand the sentences of the two journalists, free them from prison and show the international world that you will use a free press to build confidence rather than de-stabilize your institutions and government
Respectfully yours,
Robert Dowling
Jeremy Main
Freedom of the Press Committee
cc:
H.E. Abd al-Wahhab Abdallah al-Hajri
Ambassador of Yemen to the U.S.A.
Embassy of the Republic of Yemen
2600 Virginia Avenue, NW (Suite 705)
Washington, DC 20037
Fax: (202) 337.2017
Ambassador Abdallah al-Saidi
Permanent Representative
Permanent Mission of the Republic of Yemen
to the United Nations
413 East 51st Street
New York, NY 10022
Fax: (212) 750.9613
H.E. Stephen A. Seche
U.S. Ambassador to Yemen
Embassy of the United States of America
Sa’awan Street
Sana’a
Yemen
Fax: (011.967.1) 30.31.82
The Editor
The Yemen Times
editor@yementimes.com