PRESS RELEASE

For immediate release - 14 March 2008

Yemen: Support the Freedom of Expression Movement

ARTICLE 19 strongly condemns the recurring attacks against freedom of the expression in Yemen and supports the local campaign for freedom of expression hosted by the Sisters’ Arab Forum for Human Rights. In recent months, websites and newspapers have been blocked, and trails against Al-Share’ newspaper and Editor Abdul-Kareem Al-Khaiwani have continued.

On March 4, the Ministry of Information ordered the ban the newspaper Al-Sabah for allegedly “threatening the unity of Yemen and order”. Authorities have also continued censoring websites the last of which was YemenPortal.net that had its original and alternative domain blocked earlier this year. Further severe restrictions on freedom of the press in particular is the continuation of the trials of the newspaper Al-Share’ and of journalist Abdul-Kareem Al-Khaiwani. Al-Khaiwani is being tried before the Special Criminal Court on Terrorism where if convicted may face the death penalty.

“ARTICLE 19 strongly condemns the ongoing severe restrictions imposed by the authorities. We call on the Yemeni government to honour its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the country acceded in 1987″ said Agnes Callamard, ARTICLE 19 Executive Director.

ARTICLE 19 would also like to remind the Yemeni authorities of their commitment to protect human rights by adopting the National Reform Agenda in 2006, which complemented their obligation under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which they ratified, as well as the Arab Charter on Human Rights.

We therefore call on the Yemeni government to:

* Immediately cancel judicial procedures initiated against Abdul-Kareem Al-Khaiwani before the Special Criminal Court on Terrorism.

* Immediately release from prison and cancel charges against media professionals and other individuals prosecuted for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

* Put an end to all restrictive policies and practices that limit freedom of expression, such as banning journalists and newspapers from publication.

* Reform and reinforce the judiciary’s independence to ensure its effectiveness, impartiality and independence.

* Extend an invitation to the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression to carry out a visit to the country.

NOTES TO EDITORS

* For more information, please contact Sarah Richani, ARTICLE 19 Programme Officer, sarah@article19.org

* For in depth information about the situation of freedom of expression in Yemen check ARTICLE 19’s report Yemen: Freedom of Expression in Peril available in English http://www.article19.org/pdfs/publications/yemen-foereport.pdf and in Arabic at http://www.article19.org/pdfs/publications/yemen-foereport-arabic.pdf.

* The report was made possible with the funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (N.E.D.)

ARTICLE 19 is an independent human rights organisation that works globally to protect and promote the right to freedom of expression. It takes its name from Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees free speech.

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ARTICLE 19

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Tel: +44 20 7278 9292 - Fax: +44 20 7278 7660 - info@article19.org - www.article19.org

As far as we know -as of today- the status of the domains of yemenportal.net are as follows:

• yemenportal.net: blocked (main domain)
• yemen.arabiaportal.net: blocked (alternative domain)
• yemenportal.org: blocked (alternative domain)
• yemenportal.info: open (alternative domain)

It is not ruled out that the authorities ban the second open alternative domain any day now, particularly as its popularity grows. So, please subscribe to the blog to remain up-to-date and learn about the status of those domains.

The ban of yemenportal.net had a devastating impact on its readership, which is predominantly based in Yemen.

The below graph illustrates how radical an effect the first ban had on January 19, which is the date the government banned the website for the first time:

It can be clearly seen how the number of hits plummeted to about 10% of its average number of hits just after the ban took place, preventing thousands of online readers in Yemen from viewing the website’s contents. After the first ban, an alternative website was set and slowly visitors in Yemen started to get to know about it. But then again, the authorities tracked down the alternative website and had it blocked as well on February 9th and the blow graph illustrates the impact that had on the number of hits of the website just after the second ban took place (on February 9):

Since the second ban, an alternative third website was set up and its address was sent out to subscribers by email. The successive bans have resulted in frustration to thousands of readres in Yemen and demonstrate the level of intimidation and restrictions the auhtorities are practicing against it.

Help us overcome this by supporting our movement by visiting this page.

As many of you may know, after the ban of yemenportal.net, the website initiated a nation-wide resistance movement online. It is an effort to neutralize the advantage of the Yemeni government in restricting access to specific websites due to news or opinion content that it may dislike.

This resistance is starting to yield results with more people becoming familiar with it.

The idea was to basically set up a robot on the website blocked.arabiaportal.net to retrieve the content of all blocked websites and list them according to their sources and category. There are articles belonging to forums, news websites, and opinion websites. All of those stories can be viewed in full at: http://blocked.arabiaportal.net/yemen/

However, this resistance movement must have offended the regime so the website (blocked.arabiaportal.net/yemen) itself was banned. Hence, we established yet another domain yemenportal.org and put the blocked content of all those websites at yemenportal.org/blocked.

This is what the resistance is all about: never give up. It will be like this, i.e., they ban a website and we establish another, until they give up on this chase and let the people in Yemen browse banned websites freely.

Thus far, we have been able to get close to a thousand emails of people who subscribed to our service at http://yemenportal.org/?signup=1 and other websites that have already been in touch with us before.

Every time the government blocks our alternative website, we will open another. The attack on the car of yemenportal.net, which took place after we set up the second alternative domain, had only proven to us that there are elements unhappy with our acts and are willing to go to extreme lengths to deter us. However, this has not achieved their objective and we decided to close down the office and have no representative in Yemen to avoid any clashes by those people.

In brief, our resistance now is fully 100% online. But this resistance cannot grow and be more effective unless you help out and participate.

Therefore, the best you could do to help this resistance grow is to put up the below graph in a convenient location on your blog or website and have it point to the following link: http://yemenportal.org/blocked.

You can also add one of the below campaign’s logo pointing to this website: http://freeyemenportal.org:

You can make a difference. Please help our movement grow and free yemenportal.net and all other Yemeni websites.

Walid Al-Saqaf
Admin, founder
YemenPortal.net

Here are some of the many stories published or broadcast in the media related to yemenportal.net’s ban.

• March 1: Swedish Radio 1
• Feb 13: Yemen Times
• Feb 12: Java Report
• Feb 11: AMEINFO
• Feb 4: Menassat 
• Jan 26: Java Report 
• Jan 24: Yemen Times
• Jan 23: Nerikes Allehanda 
• Jan 21: Yemen Times 
• Furthermore, local (Yemeni) media had more than 30 articles in Arabic. Find most of them here

If you found reports in the media about the ban that are not listed above, we’d be delighted if you could send them to us as well. Furthermore, note that the Arabic stories are available in the Arabic section here.

YemenPortal.net

Below you will find links to the different statements and protest letters issued in relation to the ban of the portal. They are listed by date of issuance.

• Feb 13: Reporters Sans Frontiers
• Feb 12: Article19
• Feb 11: Committee To Protect Bloggers
• Feb 01: World Association of Newspapers
• Jan 31: International Center for Journalists (IJNET)
• Jan 31: World Press Freedom Committee
• Jan 30: Censor Watch
• Jan 29: Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships
• Jan 28: Arab Press Network
• Jan 26: Open Net Initiative
• Jan 25: Global Voices Online
• Jan 24: Committee to Protect Journalists
• Jan 24: International Freedom of Expression eXchange
• Jan 23: Reporters Sans Frontiers
• Jan 20: The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information

If you have seen or written a statement that is not available above, please do let us know.

YemenPortal.net