'Sana'a Review' e-magazine is here!

After lots of hurdles, along with a group of great Yemeni writers/friends, we launched 'Sana'a Review' online magazine on 22nd September and I'm the editor-in-chief.

The love & support my blog has gotten over the years is beyond what I ever imagined & I want to Give Back! I want to amplify other great Yemeni voices. I want to pass on the spotlight to the great (& emerging) Yemeni writers/journalists/artists/talents. True, Yemen is in a reck & journalists particularly are at most bleak conditions but that's exactly why we need to record what's happening to us now so there will be a time when peace prevail & we can reflect & try to heal & commemorate our history. We need to not mourn, rather organize. Each with whatever capacity they have, we need to resist & persist (like Suheir Hamdan once said).

The magazine is in Arabic because 1. I need to get in good terms with my identity crisis with the Arabic language as I believe I spoke Arabic & Amharic (Ethiopia's official language) at the same time when I first spoke as a kid. Then English became a buffer zone. Anyhow, I write more about that in the magazine in an article titled (Yemenia from Addis Ababa). *i like the title* #wink

2. Because our focus is the Yemeni audience. Sana'a Review's team believes that it's very important to combat the expansion of local propagandist media outlets & also play a role as an independent media outlet bridging people in Yemen with the growing Yemeni diaspora.

Sana'a Review hopes to have an English version in the near future so anyone anywhere can enjoy our content. You may know more details about the mission of the magazine at my Sana'a Review opening article. Also, here are our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram accounts.

Ever since I joined journalism in end 2008, I dreamt of founding a magazine. Every time I pitch to my editors & my emails convincing them of my idea tend to be longer than the final published article itself, I dreamt of founding a magazine so I can easily get published. Every time I watch Anna Wintour of Vogue magazine, I dream of being better than Anna herself & create a meaningful magazine, with all respect to the fashionistas in the world. Every time,,, enough. It's here. It's happeninnnnnng (with Oprah Winfrey voice at the back) 💥❤️💓

Caught Between Saudi Coalition and Houthi Rebels, Yemeni Journalists Face Challenges on All Sides

#FreeAbductedJournalists

Afef Abrougui from Global Voices published a lengthy report last week on the deteriorating bloody condition of Yemeni media and she interviewed me for the report last May for my take on the violations against Yemeni press following my analysis piece on the subject published by the Atlantic Council Centre published last May as well. The following is the Q&A interview I did with Afef :-

Afef Abrougui (AA): Reporters Without Borders describes the situation for journalists in Yemen as “disastrous”. Can you elaborate more on the types of violations journalists and media are facing in Yemen?

Me: The war has devastated almost every institution and sector in Yemen, including media group. However, in light of the war, journalists have been targeted deliberately and systematically because of their work. There is a massive violence against journalists by different armed groups; Houthis’ forces, Saleh’s forces and extremist groups like al Qaeda, ISIS and Salafis. The types of violations range between death threats, assassination attempts, unlawful killings, kidnappings, unlawful arrests, detentions without trials, forcibly disappearance, being used as civilian shields during armed fights, media offices being stormed in and forcefully shut down, new websites being blocked, among many other violations. The most shocking violation was the prosecution of a journalist and being sentenced to death.


AA: From the research that I have so far been doing online, it seems that Houthi rebels represent the main party responsible for these violations, what about the Saudi-led coalition? In addition to the airstrikes that killed journalists, have the coalition and those supporting Hadi been responsible for silencing journalists and media on the ground (at least in areas under their control)?

Me: Yes, both the Saudis and Hadi’s leadership share equally the reasons of why there is a blackout on Yemen war in media. As the war began in Yemen in early 2015, WikiLeaks released thousands of diplomatic cables from Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry, which included documents showing how Saudi Arabia is buying media silence, Arabic media in specific. Plus, reports have shown how the Saudis are hiring PR companies to polish its image in media and "whitewash” its record on human rights; especially on KSA’s war crimes in Yemen. On the other hand, Hadi’s government have blocked several independent foreign journalists from accessing the country; as their reporting challenges Hadi’s folks’ narrative of the situation in Yemen.


AA: How do you think these attacks/violations are impacting coverage of the war in Yemen, a war that is already under-reported? How does this affect independent media?

Me: Media coverage of Yemen war has become like a battle zone; those who have the money and power manage to use media as a weapon of war in promoting their side of the story only and shaping how Yemen war appears on mainstream media. Each side in the war portraits only its “truth” while it’s totally incomplete picture of the situation. As a result, you find a great deal of war propaganda. No middle ground for any other type of media; local independent press suffers a great deal and it has collapsed. The only remaining Yemeni independent media are the Yemeni freelance journalists or citizen journalists who turned into social media disseminating updates on the situation in Yemen.


AA: What can international organisations that work to promote press and media freedoms do to support Yemeni journalists who are on the ground?

Me: It’s very important to give these journalists the attention while they are alive not when they are killed or arrested; meaning it’s important to reach out to journalists inside Yemen and find ways to meet their needs. Very often, a local Yemeni journalist who is covering the war inside the country would his name grab international media’s headlines when he’s sentenced to death or killed or etc. The attention that these local journalists could get while they are alive could really give them a sort of protection from such violations. More importantly, as Yemen’s economy is collapsing, it’s crucial to financially support these local journalists working on the ground. This could happen through mutual cooperation or allocating assignments for these journalists. In simple words, it’s crucial to support Yemeni journalists or media groups morally and financially.


AA: When Houthi rebels first took control of the capital, they resorted to blocking a number of news websites and blogs, do they still engage in such tactics? Have you recently heard about websites or blogs getting blocked in the country?

Me: Yes, they still use such tactics. Several new websites are blocked in Yemen; such as this one - as Hodeidah is under the Houthis’ control and the website is critical to their behaviour in the city. Blogs are not very popular in Yemen but Facebook represents the equivalent of blogs. There are Facebook celebrities in Yemen who are very active in posting on FB and are critical to the Houthis. These celebrities’ FB accounts have been hacked and sometimes more than once. It seems that’s the Houthis’ tactic to censor.

World Press Freedom Day: Yemenis’ Words & Lives Under Fire

Picture by Malin Crona

Reporters without boarders' office in Sweden has awarded the imprisoned Saudi blogger, Raif Badawi the World Press Freedom award yesterday in Stockholm. I took part in a panel discussion part of the award ceremony along with a number of Swedish journalists. I'm posting here a text I prepared for the session that could shed light on parts of the press freedom condition in Yemen that's affected by the war's cruelty. 

World Press Freedom Day: Yemenis’ Words & Lives Under Fire

May 3, 2015 – There is so much going on in Yemen as I speak, and talking about the right to free press might be considered totally irrelevant. Yemen is at war and Yemenis are struggling to have the right to peace and life. The war has been waged almost six weeks ago after a coalition of 10 Arab countries headed by Saudi Arabia started operating a campaign of airstrikes against military targets in Yemen and simultaneously there is a fierce internal armed fights between several domestic factions. As the war is taking place, a great deal of citizens’ rights are violated and no doubt the right to free information and freedom of expression are violated as well. Actually, it’s hard to know where to start in analyzing the current condition of press freedom in the country in the light of the ongoing war. Nonetheless, here is my attempt.



2014, in particular has been a chaotic and harsh year for free press in Yemen and it continues to be so as the ongoing multi-facets conflicts are taking place in the country. Yemeni journalists are facing mounting dangers in practicing their job and facing grave threats to their own lives in the light of the ongoing violence and the authoritarian style of leadership shown by the new ruling power now at the hands of the Houthi’ militia group, who came to power, or still fighting to have full power, since their coup against president Hadi and his government carried in september last year. Generally speaking, before the coup, press in Yemen could be described as partisan press: journalism outlets usually worked along with political party lines. Today, the press is heavily used as a tool for propaganda and instigation of animosity and hatred). Having said that, Clearly, the war’s implications would also have a grave impact on how the press’ future would look like.


In the wider view over the current condition for media in Yemen: it is important to note that Following Yemen’s Uprising in 2011, there was a relatively boom in the field of media in the country: Despite widespread illiteracy, by last year, Yemen had around 90 newspapers published weekly or more often and the state's monopoly on broadcasting had been broken; there were several privately-owned Yemeni TV channels (some of them based outside the country) plus a number of radio stations. As elsewhere, there had also been a rapid increase in citizen journalism, including often well-made videos posted on YouTube(1). And investigative journalists –represented as watchdogs of democracy– they were doing courageous reporting where they were becoming as whistleblowers of corruption cases linked to powerful governmental institutions and exposing powerful governmental and non-governmental figures.


This progress was an expansion to the merits media managed to seize after the promising media booming that was reminiscent of north-south unification developments during the 1990s: when we witnessed a convergence of government-owned and officially-approved publications being joined together. (This was also at the time when Yemen became the first country in the Arabian peninsula to hold competitive parliamentary elections under universal suffrage.)(2) Something to note also, which has been a trouble, during that post-unification era, there was a growing wave of media outlets being dependent on a certain political party or political personality or group – there has been little of truly independent media because it couldn’t finance itself; someone had to back it.


Now going back to the harsh condition of media in Yemen starting since 2014, as I mentioned earlier, and how it’ll continue to be so as it got affected by the ongoing war: in my opinion there have been two major events that took place since September of last year that are gravely affecting press in Yemen:

1) On the 21st of September, last year, the coup d'état carried out by a group of militias, called Ansar Allah, headed by Abdelmalek al Houthi represented a major setback to the overall security and political stability, and any democratic process for that matter in the country. Citizen’s rights and freedom of information in particular have been awfully violated. Many journalists have been the targets of threats, physical attacks or abduction by Houthi rebels. Rebels have also stormed many media outlets. Most importantly, following the coup, The rebels have been controlling official buildings, including the state radio and TV.

2) The second major event is the current war that erupted on the 26th of March, causing damage and destruction; and the war’s casualties include killing dozens of civilians, among them children and also media workers. The impact of the violence has left so far, more than one thousand death toll, more than five thousands injuries, more than three hundred thousand of IDPs, and more than two hundred thousand of refugees, and 7.5 million people are affected. In addition, there has been destruction of civilians’ houses, cities’ infrastructure and buildings; which includes a number of media houses. In this particular period, since the start of the war, State-owned Yemen Net, the largest internet service provider in the country, has continued to block websites over their coverage of the Saudi-led war against Houthi rebels. A number of local search news sites were blocked in late March, websites of the regional news networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya were also blocked for sometime. Few newspapers stopped publishing due to the lack of services like electricity and fuel. Also the access to twitter via the web was blocked (people only managed to access twitter via mobile apps) for sometime.


So this is all happening while the rebels are now in control of the capital Sana’a and its government offices, including the ministry of communications and information.

The matter is, media is only the edge of the restrictions made by Al Houthis. The real problem is that dozens of political activists, political figures, civil society activists, NGOs members, have been restricted by al Houthis’ censorship and aggression. Just last week, there has been a list of names(3) made to summon some figures who are active in the media to be held for interrogation by al Houthis’ men. Basically, Houthis want to prevent the flow of information so their ideas only can dominate.

Nonetheless, I would like to highlight an interesting aspect of the role of social media in the course of this war. I have experienced living a war during Yemen’s civil war in 1994, I was nine at that time but I remember how it was difficult to have an access to information, news and reports about what was going on. Internet did not exist at that time and we depended heavily on international radio channels as local ones were shut down for some reason or another and still those international radio channels were poorly aired – it was difficult to be informed from reliable media outlets about what was going on.


But, the role of social media in this war has been extremely impressive. The war is indeed tweeted and facebooked and youtubed and even instagrammed. There is a significant rise of citizen journalism that goes back to during the Yemen’s Uprising in 2011. I myself was among those Yemenis who turned towards the cyberspace as an alternative means to report news or express ourselves, and communicate with the international media and audiences. Citizen journalism was indeed part of the re-making of media not only in Yemen but in most of the Arab Spring’s countries. We, Yemeni citizen journalists at the beginning of 2011, were a handful of people, but today, there is no specific statistics how many social media users are in Yemen but I assure you we are countless. That might be attributed to the increase in the internet usage among Yemen’s 26 population over the past four years: in 2011 it was estimated that only 3% had access but today it is estimated that more than 15% people are using the internet.


This has both negative and positive aspects; since the internet is like a double-edged sword that has benefit and liability. Besides that Social media plays a role among citizen journalists, it is also used to a great extent, in my opinion, to spread hatred, to dehumanize people and to mislead. That makes the necessity of verification and affirming the credibility of the content being spread a very important issue. This all makes truth at stake during the current turbulent time.


Essentially, free press today in Yemen suffers from a counter-revolution era following the uprising in 2011. It’s a historical time for Yemen and definitely that includes the press. The new leadership is increasingly trying to control as much as media as they can, and even to control the digitalized media on the web which is hard to do. It is not clear how all those developments are going to shape the press future. But, no doubt, It is a difficult period for media while paradoxically at the same time there so much more opportunity the digital media can offer to produce a lot more of free information, but you can't do that in the context of being politically active inside the country. I must stress as well, there are some independent media outlets and workers, some of them do courageous work, despite being drained-out and ill-financed, they are still challenging the new emerging authoritarian rule in Yemen. I think it is extremely important to support these voices in any way possible and amplify their messages. Supporting free press starts with supporting independent media workers.


Lastly, I urge you all to join Yemeni people calling for an end of the violence that is causing a humanitarian catastrophe. Besides the increasing number of war’s casualties, airports in Yemen have been destroyed, borders with Yemen have been shut and many countries have been refusing Yemenis’ visa entry and there is a severe shortage of food and fuel as the country is in a state of being sieged – Yemen has become a large prison - it’s a living catastrophe. We request your solidarity because silence is a war crime too.

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1-http://www.al-bab.com/blog/2014/october/yemen-media.htm#sthash.Dcss25ig.TEvP5XFM.dpbs

2-http://www.al-bab.com/blog/2014/october/yemen-media.htm#sthash.Dcss25ig.TEvP5XFM.dpbs

3-https://twitter.com/hamzaalkamaly/status/593104132271185921