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It is possible that so-called “Christmas Day bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came to Yemen for Al-Qaeda terrorist training because it was out of the limelight. Until now, international media has sent in journalists intermittently to cover stories on Somali refugees or the Houthi rebellion in the North, but few foreign journalists are based here and the majority of coverage had come from local stringers or freelancers.
Following Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt to
blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 to
“It didn’t matter that there were five wars, it didn’t matter that there were displaced people from the war in Saada, the unemployment and poverty was of no concern,” said Nadia Abdulazia Al-Sakkaf, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Yemen Times, a local English-language newspaper. “I am upset with the international media. We had to do something really nasty, like Abdulmutallab, before people became interested.”
With the failed bombing, the international
media was finally writing about the country, but “showed
But how did the uproar change the way the
local press in
“We are treated differently by default,” said Al-Sakkaf. “I have been trying to get an interview with the president for a year with no success. None of the local media has been able to, apart from one editor who got an interview by chance when he walked up to the president at an informal party and interviewed him there and then.”
“When the international press came they were granted interviews straight away,” she added. “I think even a Dubai-based sports channel got an interview with the president.”
Muhammed Kibsi, editor of the Yemen Observer, echoes Al-Sakkaf’s sentiments. “If I want to get an interview with the prime minister, I can’t get it unless I have some sort of relationship,” he said. “When the foreign journalists came they were able to get interviews in a matter of days.”
Kibsi has worked for foreign news journalists in the past and has seen firsthand the Yemeni government’s double standards. “I would phone a minister or a government employee on my Yemeni mobile and they would never pick up,” he said. “Eventually, I would ask the foreign journalist I was working with for their phone and call using an international number. Then I would always get a reply.”
But the treatment of the local press by the government extends beyond ignoring calls for interviews. CPJ recently reported the resurfacing of Muhammad al-Maqaleh, editor of the opposition Yemeni Socialist Party’s news Web site, Aleshteraki, who has been detained for five months—he alleges he has been tortured by his abductors. In January, Yemeni police surrounded the independent daily Al-Ayyam, a siege that ended with two deaths and nine injuries, according to local news reports.
And the local press is not only prevented
from practicing journalism by the authorities; radical Islamic groups in
Kibsi has also had "multiple problems" with people hacking into his paper's Web site. “We eventually had to close our Arabic-language Web site after it was repeatedly destroyed by hackers," he said. "We just can’t run it anymore.”
Oliver Holmes is a freelance writer reporting
from Sana’a,
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