The arrest on 6 January of the editor and publisher of Yemen’s Al-Ayyam newspaper, Hisham Bashraheel, has reinforced concerns that Yemen’s high-profile clampdown on militants is being used as a pretext to further suppress media freedom.

Bashraheel was arrested on 6 January, following clashes between police and armed guards of the daily newspaper, in which a policeman and a guard were killed and several others wounded.

The clashes started on 4 January, when police attempted to disperse a crowd, which had gathered outside the offices of Al-Ayyam, based in the southern city of Aden, to protest the banning of the newspaper in May 2009, along with another eight publications, for allegedly inciting separatism in the region.

According to media reports, Brigadier General Abduallah Qairan, head of police forces in Aden, said that on 4 January demonstrators in front of the Al-Ayyam building opened fire on the police, who retaliated.

Bashraheel, however, said that the demonstrators were not armed and were staging a peaceful protest.

Deputy Interior Minister General Saleh Zuari said that 40 members of an Al-Qaeda-linked southern movement armed with Kalashnikov rifles and other weapons were inside the newspaper building and exchanged fire with police, the Yemen Times reported.

Yemeni authorities say they also want Bashraheel to stand trial for his alleged role in the murder of a man in front of Al-Ayyam’s offices in February 2008, when a gunfight broke out between 12 gunmen, who had attacked Al-Ayyam, and the newspaper’s guards. Four of the assailants were injured; one of them died later in hospital, Al-Ayyam reported.

IPI Board Member Fredy Gsteiger, a diplomatic correspondent for Switzerland’s Radio DRS who met with Al-Ayyam editor Bashraheel during a recent trip to Yemen, told IPI today: “Al-Ayyam is one of the very few newspapers in Yemen that owns its own printing press. The government therefore has no possibility to control its publication through the printing process, as it does with many other publications. Al-Ayyam‘s independence, as well as the fact that it is a southern voice, have been at the basis of the government’s pressure on the newspaper.”

Separatist sentiment among the population of the impoverished regions of southern Yemen has caused an upsurge in violence since April 2009. The authorities, meanwhile, have harassed and intimidated journalists and suspended newspapers.

The south of Yemen gained independence in 1967 and was run until 1990, under the name of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, by a socialist government allied with the Soviet Union. Yemeni unification was proclaimed in May 1990. A short civil war in 1994 ended in defeat for separatist southerners.

IPI Board Member Gsteiger said: “Bashraheel told me that the newspaper is not in favour of secession. However, it has been critical of the government’s policies.”

IPI Press Freedom Manager Anthony Mills said: “It appears that the persecution of Al-Ayyam and its editor is in connection with the newspaper’s reporting and is therefore a serious press freedom violation. The Yemeni authorities must understand that, especially during times of crisis, the public has a fundamental right to be informed by an independent press. We urge the authorities to immediately halt their clampdown on critical media, and to ensure that journalists in particular, and the population in general, are guaranteed their universal rights.”