The latest news out of Yemen is that two more journalists have been sentenced to jail-terms. On January 6, Editor-in-Chief of Al-Hurriya newspaper Abdulkareem Sabra and one of the newspaper’s reporters Abdulqawi Al-Qubati both got two-year jail sentences with hard labor. The editor of the Yemen Times weighs in with a candid editorial:
...The media is fundamental to increasing public awareness, which should be the driving force
behind human development. Police forces surrounded the house of Sabra, and treated him like a dangerous criminal. These kinds of incidents have been occurring regularly since President Saleh declared that he would delete the paragraph in the press law that deals with the imprisonment of journalists.
Where is President Saleh in all of this? Why does he not act and act swiftly to save the country’s press from this injustice? Or was all of this done with his consent, despite the fact that he was the person who pledged to protect journalists from imprisonment?
...I cannot hold myself from asking who could be next? Could it be me? ...It is a matter of life or death for the freedoms that we have worked so hard to gain and maintain. If we fail, we might as well close our newspapers and return home. This could be the end of the democratic journey, and then we can kiss our press freedom good bye!
Editor Walid Abdulaziz Al-Saqqaf deserves credit for daring to speak openly about these arrests. Of course, the very fact that it's daring for a Yemeni journalist to even question the government's policy shows how far Yemen has to go.
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