New media restrictions, erected under the cover of state security, will snuff out what little remains of press freedom in Yemen
Mohamed Abdel Dayem
(Middle East and North Africa program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists.)
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 September 2010
""In Yemen, you conceal your identity as a journalist. Your journalism ID is a liability, not an asset. It turns you into a target." Those were among the first words that journalist Abdulelah Hider Shaea said to me as we sipped tea on a breezy Friday afternoon in July in the capital, Sana'a.
Shaea works for the official Saba news agency and is a frequent commentator on Islamist groups. Those ominous words reverberated in my ears when, less than a handful of days later, I heard that Shaea had been snatched off a busy street by armed men in civilian clothing and taken to an unknown location.
When I met with him just a few hours after his release, Shaea told of unidentified security personnel who wanted "to frighten and silence" him, adding that he would not be dissuaded from continuing his work as a journalist.
In mid-August, agents of the national security apparatus took Shaea again, this time holding him incommunicado for an entire month before referring him to a prosecutor. At the time of writing, Shaea had just been charged with "providing assistance" to al-Qaida. The evidence: nothing more than his publicly available news and analysis....."
Mohamed Abdel Dayem
(Middle East and North Africa program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists.)
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 September 2010
""In Yemen, you conceal your identity as a journalist. Your journalism ID is a liability, not an asset. It turns you into a target." Those were among the first words that journalist Abdulelah Hider Shaea said to me as we sipped tea on a breezy Friday afternoon in July in the capital, Sana'a.
Shaea works for the official Saba news agency and is a frequent commentator on Islamist groups. Those ominous words reverberated in my ears when, less than a handful of days later, I heard that Shaea had been snatched off a busy street by armed men in civilian clothing and taken to an unknown location.
When I met with him just a few hours after his release, Shaea told of unidentified security personnel who wanted "to frighten and silence" him, adding that he would not be dissuaded from continuing his work as a journalist.
In mid-August, agents of the national security apparatus took Shaea again, this time holding him incommunicado for an entire month before referring him to a prosecutor. At the time of writing, Shaea had just been charged with "providing assistance" to al-Qaida. The evidence: nothing more than his publicly available news and analysis....."
No comments:
Post a Comment