Yemeni security forces attacked al Ayyam again at 2:49 am Tuesday morning, the attack is in progress with Yemeni security forces using live rounds and tear gas to attack the newpaper headquarters and residence of the editors.
Update 2: Reporters without Borders, Army machine guns protestors outside newspaper office amidst growing clampdown As usual, Yemen lies.
Update from Aden Gulf Net: Northern occupation forces cracked down on Monday afternoon, as some 500 people were in the sit-in in solidarity with the newspaper al-Ayyam. They were forcibly stopped by the Ministry of Information, as the security forces began killing people who were shot dead by security forces, according to witnesses and spokesmen for al Ayyam.
On Monday, civil society organizations in Aden held a sit-in in front of Al-Ayyam Newspaper’s building in Aden, Yemen that began at 3:00pm. Around 4:00pm, central security forces arrived and began to attempt to disperse the pro-freedom of the press demonstration. Within several minutes, the soldiers opened fire at the compound with live rounds. The shooting lasted for 30 minutes. None of the protesters or those within the building’s compound fired back.
The security forces announced one person was killed and two injured.
By 10 pm this evening, the military was laying siege to the newspaper’s compound and cut off all roads leading to the district of Crater. Soldiers have started to station on top of nearby buildings.
The newspaper hasn’t published since May, when it was banned for reporting on anti-government protests in southern Yemen. Its delivery trucks were attacked and copies of the paper burned. Several of al Ayyam’s journalists have been brought up on charges of “undermining unity” by reporting on the civil unrest in the south. Yemeni President Saleh is largely reviled in southern Yemen as a tyrant and a thief. Some southerners consider their lands illegally occupied by the Saleh regime after 1994’s civil war.
One of the most respected and long established independent news papers in Yemen, al Ayyam recently won the ACE Freedom of the Press Award, which noted in its award:
“The Al Ayyam newspaper has shown enormous commitment and bravery by covering sensitive stories despite paying a high price for being out spoken in Yemen, one of the World’s most closed countries. Created in 1958, Al-Ayyam is one of Yemen’s leading dailies. It has no political affiliation but, with headquarters in the southern city of Aden, it acts as a mouthpiece of the inhabitants of the poor southern provinces and has provided extensive coverage of the social unrest in the south in recent months.”
“The Al Ayyam newspaper has shown enormous commitment and bravery by covering sensitive stories despite paying a high price for being out spoken in Yemen, one of the World’s most closed countries. Created in 1958, Al-Ayyam is one of Yemen’s leading dailies. It has no political affiliation but, with headquarters in the southern city of Aden, it acts as a mouthpiece of the inhabitants of the poor southern provinces and has provided extensive coverage of the social unrest in the south in recent months.”
Reporters Without Borders condemned Yemen’s attempt to use the current anti-terror push to crush human rights after security forces today fired on a crowd of protestors staging a ‘sit-in’ outside the offices of a banned newspaper.
“The Ali Abdallah Saleh government is taking advantage of support from foreign powers in the fight against terrorism on its soil to deliberately violate people’s rights”, the worldwide press freedom organisation said.
“The international community must remind the Sanna government that the legitimate fight against terrorism can never be used to justify cracking down on the media”, it said.
More than 200 demonstrators answered a call from several Yemeni human rights organisations to hold a ‘sit-in’ outside the offices of the newspaper al-Ayyam in Aden, in protest at the forced closure of the daily since May last year and to call for its reopening.
Editor Hisham Bashraheel described the scene to Reporters Without Borders: “The security forces started firing on the crowd at 16.07pm. The police even aimed at one of their own number to make it look like the demonstrators were armed, when in fact everyone came to protest peacefully”.
“We are surrounded. There are soldiers and police everywhere,” he added. “We have heard them calling for reinforcements. The demonstrators are still gathered at the entrance. It will be dark in Aden soon and we fear the worst”, the worried editor said.
Security forces previously fired on the offices of the newspaper on 13 May 2009 (http://www.rsf.org/Soldiers-fire-on-Aden-based.html), after the information minister banned the newspaper from printing on 4 May in the name of the principle of the “country’s national unity” (http://www.rsf.org/Major-crackdown-on-independent.html). The situation deteriorated still further on 15 July when a journalist on the newspaper, Anis Ahmed Mansur Hamida, was sentenced to 14 months in prison for “attacking national unity” and “separatism” at the end of a politically motivated trial (http://www.rsf.org/Al-Ayyam-reporter-gets-14-month.html). He remains in prison.
The state of press freedom in the country has considerably worsened since May 2009, particularly in the south of the country. Nothing has been heard of Khalid Jahafi a journalist on the opposition news website Alsahwa.net since security forces arrested him on 27 December 2009 while he was taking photos of clashes between police officers and supporters of the southern pro-independence movement (http://www.rsf.org/Crackdown-on-media-reinforced.html). Shafi’ al-Abd, a journalist on the newspaper al-Nada, as well as four members of the leadership of the Federation of Southern Youth, were arrested by police in Aden on 28 December, before being moved to Khor Maksar jail in Aden province. The journalist has been charged with forming a political party hostile to “security and national unity”. A court in Lahij province has also postponed indefinitely and without explanation the trial of journalist Iyyad Ghanem, who is in worsening health from a two-week hunger strike. He has been in custody for six months after filming a rally by supporters of the southern rebel groups in the city of Korsh.
Further, nothing has been heard since 18 September of journalist Muhammad al-Maqalih, who disappeared in unexplained circumstances. Many Yemeni journalists believe the security services were responsible for his abduction, despite their denials. Fouad Rashid, editor of the website Al-Mukalla Press, and Salah al-Saqladi, editor of the website Adengulf-website, are also still being held.
Ottawa International Poets and Writers for human Rights (OIPWHR)
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