Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009middle east and north africa: yemenIn August, the syndicate’s leaders were replaced at a meeting stacked withpro-government members. The first order of business for the reconstituted syndicatewas sending a message of allegiance to Ben Ali for his “sustained keennesson further promoting the Tunisian media landscape.” The new leadership ignoredattacks on press freedom, among them an October police raid at the Tunis officesof Internet Radio 6 and the confiscation of the station’s broadcasting equipment,journalists told CPJ.Ownership of private broadcast media was dominated by Ben Ali’s relatives andclose friends, a situation the Tunisian Syndicate of Free Radio Stations condemnedin October as a “policy of cronyism.” Ben Ali’s son-in-law, Sakhr Materi, establisheda religious radio broadcaster called Ezzeitouna in 2007 and was given approval toset up a television station under the same name, according to news reports. In April,Materi also took control of Dar Assabah, the oldest and one of the most importantprivately owned print media groups in the country. Most privately owned mediaoutlets continuously praised Ben Ali’s leadership and attacked his critics.CPJ wrote twice to Ben Ali in 2009 to urge him to end attacks on journalistsand to bring his government’s practices in line with standards outlined inthe International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. CPJ Executive DirectorJoel Simon noted that “acts of reprisal against critical journalism are routine,systematic, and continue unabated.” He added: “The failure to protect freedomof expression is all the more disheartening because Tunisia was among the firstcountries in the region to sign and ratify the International Covenant on Civil andPolitical Rights, and to do so without reservations.”YEMENContinuing a steady years-long decline, yemen became oneof the most repressive countries in the region for the press. Journalists coveringclashes in the country’s restive south faced severe restrictions. Governmentrepression reached its peak in May, when at least eight newspapers that had coveredviolent protests were barred from distribution, several papers faced criminalcharges, and one paper came under direct attack from state security agents. Governmentofficials established a special court for perceived news media offenses.The Sana’a-based government sought to tamp down longstanding tensionsin the country’s south, where demonstrators protested policies they saw as marginalizingthe region’s residents and denying them public services. In late April—around the anniversary of the 1990 unification of north and south—conditionsboiled over as government troops clashed with armed protesters. Following itspast practice, the government moved aggressively to control the flow of infor-mation. An armed group believed to have acted on behalf of authorities burnedmore than 16,000 copies of the popular daily Al-Ayyam on May 1, BashraheelBashraheel, the paper’s general manager, told CPJ. Two days later, military authoritiesprevented distribution of the paper, he said. By May 4, security forceshad surrounded the paper’s production plant and effectively barred it from publishing,Bashraheel said.The Ministry of Information expanded its suppression of the news the sameday, barring the sales of Sana’a-based Al-Masdar, Al-Ahali, Al-Diyar, Al-Mustaqila,Al-Nida, Al-Share, and Aden-based Al-Wattani and Al-Ayyam, according topress reports. All had covered unrest in the south in ways that were critical ofthe government. Information Minister Hassan Ahmed al-Luzi argued that thepapers had violated the country’s press law by publishing articles that threatenednational unity and “spread hatred and enmity among the united people of Yemen,”Yemen Times reported.President Ali Abdullah Saleh sent a similar message when he addressed parliamenton May 6. “If there is room to talk in the press then you have to publishkindness, love, and brotherhood. If there were mistakes in development or securityor the judiciary, criticize those mistakes and there would be no objection,there is room for that. But the unity, freedom, democracy, revolution, the republic,and the constitution are national invariants that cannot be crossed,” he wasquoted as saying in the state-run newspaper Al-Thawra.Al-Ayyam remained shut in late year. The other newspapers resumed publicationbut faced sporadic censorship and harassment, according to local pressreports. Authorities also took court action against several of the same newspapersin May. The Ministry of Information filed criminal complaints against Al-Masdar, Al-Wattani, Al-Diyar, Al-Nida, Al-Share, and Al-Ayyam on charges ofinciting hatred and harming the unity and the interests of the country. The caseswere pending in late year. Under the press code, editors of the papers could faceup to one year imprisonment.Government hostility against the press reached its peak on May 13 whensecurity forces carried out an armed raid on the offices of Al-Ayyam in Aden, themain city in southern Yemen, the paper’s general manager, Bashraheel, told CPJ.Clashes between security agents and the newspaper’s guards lasted for about anhour, during which one passer-by was killed and two guards were injured. Securityforces said they were trying to arrest Al-Ayyam Editor-in-Chief HishamBashraheel, his son Hani Bashraheel, and another staffer in relation to a 2008case in which newspaper guards killed one of several assailants who were tryingto take control of the paper’s offices. Mohammed Al-Baqwaly, Al-Ayyam’s lawyer,questioned the judiciary’s motivation in seeking the arrests given the government’slong record of censorship and harassment of the paper.238239