Four journalists from the United States and the United Kingdom were expelled from Yemen yesterday, news reports said, as attacks on foreign and local journalists covering the anti-regime protests in Yemen continue, according to IPI research.
Yemeni security forces raided the journalists’ apartment early on Monday 14 March, and deported them from the country, news reports said. The reporters were among the few foreign journalists in Yemen, as the country stopped issuing journalist visas when protests inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt began earlier this year.
The deportations are part of what appears to be a concerted effort to keep reports of the escalating violence between protestors and government forces in the capital, Sanaa, industrial center Taiz and the southern coastal city of Aden out of the news. In the capital, police have raided the buildings surrounding Change Square – epicentre of the protests – in an effort to find cameras and stop journalists recording events from there, Sadeq Al-Wesabi of the Yemen Times told IPI by phone today.
“We are threatened from taking pictures and covering the demonstrations,” said Al-Wesabi. Threats and attacks against journalists and the confiscation of equipment continue despite a law protecting journalists, which was introduced to the Yemeni Parliament last week. The new law forbids security forces from harassing and attacking journalists, according to a report in the Yemen Times.
Yet last week, security forces seized equipment from the Sanaa bureaus of Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya news networks because of their coverage of unrest in the south, Al Jazeera reported on its English language website. After covering prison riots in Sanaa, on 7 March Al Jazeera correspondent Ahmed Al-Shalafi* received threats against his children would be kidnapped, Yemeni Journalists Syndicate coordinator Thuraya Dammaj said in an emailed message to IPI this afternoon. Al-Salahi’s home has since been surrounded by police, Al-Wesabi said.
Yemen Times Managing Editor Jeb Boone told IPI by phone from Sanaa that some foreign reporters who have been found with cameras have had their memory cards seized by security forces. Other foreign journalists who are still in Yemen may still face deportation, IPI sources said.
Boone himself was briefly detained by police on Sunday evening while on his way home from dinner, he told IPI. Police questioned him for about an hour and a half before releasing him.
But local reporters may be faring even worse, according to Boone, who noted that those who are identified as journalists are “physically beaten.”
Abdul Salam Jaber, editor of the Civil Case Newspaper, was abducted on the evening of 12 March, in front of the University of Sana’a, said Dammaj. According to Dammaj, security services initially denied that Jaber was in their custody, until he was released on Monday morning.
On Sunday 13 March, a group of around 20 people “stormed” the Syndicate’s headquarters in Sanaa, threatening to burn the building down. The Yemeni Journalists Syndicate has been a vocal supporter of press freedom and journalists’ rights.
Journalist Abdulelah Shai remains in custody. Shai was sentenced to five years in prison earlier this year for allegedly recruiting for Al-Qaeda and taking photos of potential targets for the Islamist terrorist group. On 1 February, two weeks after his sentencing, Shai was pardoned on a presidential order – but the order was never carried out, reportedly because United States President Barack Obama expressed fears about Shai’s connections to Al-Qaeda.
“The government must stop attempting to control the flow of information about the unrest and violence in Yemen,” said IPI Director Alison Bethel McKenzie. “As the demonstrations in Egypt showed, in this day and age it is not possible to stop the flow of information, only to delay it. The government should instruct its supporters and police to respect the recently passed law protecting journalists from attacks by security forces. ”
*Correction: The name of Ahmed Al-Shalafi was originally mispelled.
