Iona Craig in Yemen

Journalists beware: Washington's wrath

2012-02-10T08:45:41Z

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism quite rightly threw up its arms in protest this week at the accusation by an anonymous ‘senior American counterterrorism official’ that they were ‘helping al-Qaeda’ by revealing the death toll of civilian casualties in CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, whilst also pointing out that this was not the first time US officials had attacked their findings.

Although most would see the claim that the Bureau is aiding the terrorist network as merely a transparent tantrum by Washington, it’s rather easier for the same officials to make the ‘al-Qaeda sympathiser’ label stick on a Yemeni citizen.

Yemeni journalist Abdul-Elah Haidar Shaye’s official charge sheet listed some not dissimilar accusations: working as a media advisor for al-Qaeda and holding meetings with senior leaders of AQAP [Shaye specialised as a terrorism and al-Qaeda expert, conducting an exclusive interview with Anwar al-Awlaki for Al-Jazeera in 2009.]

But when the first hearing of his trial took place in October 2010, the 34-year-old

journalist was well aware of the alternative motive behind his incarceration. Refusing legal representation on the grounds that his trial was illegal, he shouted to the judge through the caged wall that separated him from the packed courtroom:

“When they hid murderers of children and women in Abyan, when I revealed the locations and camps of nomads and civilians in Abyan, Shabwa and Arhab, when they were going to be hit by cruise missiles, it was on that day they decided to arrest me.”

Shaye was the first journalist to claim the US was responsible for killing 55 people, including 21 children, along with 14 alleged al-Qaeda members, in an attack in the province of Abyan in December 2009.

The journalist’s assertions were later confirmed after the conclusion of his trial by Wikileaks cables released in December 2010. The leaked documents recorded a meeting between President Saleh and the then head of US central command, General David Petraeus, during which they discussed the aftermath of the December 2009 bombings. Saleh told Petraeus: “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.”

The thinly veiled charges saw Shaye sentenced in January last year to five years behind bars. Days later Ali Abdullah Saleh, as one of several concessions offered to appease anti-government protesters, granted him a presidential pardon. But Shaye never walked free. Due to direct intervention by President Barack Obama, in a phone call to his Yemeni counterpart on February 2, Shaye remained in jail.

The reaction by the US this week to the Bureau’s findings serves well to underline the reason behind Shaye’s continued incarceration and Washington’s interference in his case.

The Yemen Times has repeatedly covered Shaye’s plight, but otherwise his detention at the behest of the US president has gone largely unnoticed by the English speaking press. The Yemeni Journalist Syndicate has made several requests to visit Shaye in prison, but during more than a year and half in jail only his family have been granted access.

The International Federation of Journalists announced this week it had written a letter to Hilary Clinton “to demand that the administration lift its objection to the release of Shaye.” As a paid up card-carrying [ironically the very card that got me into court to see Shaye’s trial] member of the IFJ I think it’s an embarrassment that it’s taken the organisation a year to respond.

Perhaps some consolation for Shaye and his family is that his time in prison may well have saved his life. Given the events of last year and the increase in CIA drone strikes in southern Yemen since May 2011, if Shaye had been a free man and continued in his line of work it’s distinctly possible he would have become a victim of the very strikes he sought to expose; a “mistake” as Washington claimed the two teenagers killed in a Shabwa drone strike were in October last year, or a convenient coincidence.

Chris Woods and colleagues at the Bureau are fortunate they remain out of reach of anything more than stroppy comments from anonymous senior US officials. In Yemen the wrath of Washington leaves Shaye facing another four years in a Sana’a prison.

Burnt out

2011-07-29T16:13:41Z

Tomorrow marks 250 days since daily protests began in Yemen. I, along with just one other foreign journalist, Jeb Boone, have been here to see every day of them. This weekend, for the first time since January, I’ll be taking a break from Yemen.

The past six months have been astonishing, exhilarating, sometimes terrifying, harrowing but above all exhausting. Indeed nearly everyone in Sana’a today is worn out.

Violence aside, months of shortages, most notably: electricity, fuel and as a consequence, water, have been draining (no pun intended) to live with.

As freelancers living here our lives couldn’t be further removed from our established colleagues of visiting foreign correspondents.

I think I hit the wall in the days after Saleh’s departure on June 5, after trying to keep up with demands of editors and producers whilst living on 2-3 hours sleep during the Hasaba war. (Note: ringing a journalist continuously at 3am without notice for a phoner will not be well received - as one US producer found out.)

Just as fresh faced visiting journalists started flooding in (a Yemen journalist flood is aprox. six) to stay in their comfy hotels with a constant supply of water and electricity, I was spending my mornings collecting water to take home to wash out of a bucket. (This isn’t meant to be a ‘woe is me’ fish for sympathy. I was far from alone in my daily quest for water and electricity and unlike most Yemenis I only have to look after number one.)

Ironically today’s Friday prayers protest was labelled the “Friday of Patience” – something worth praying for at the moment.

My own patience ran out along with the water having done the night time petrol queues for six hours (they later stretched to more then six days) trying to help out friends. (Women were put in a separate, usually much shorter queue so a female driver could get to the front hours ahead of men). I’d had enough of the endless dark nights, inability to store food or work from home, or even take a shower; not to mention spending endless mornings in a mix of government buildings and hotel foyers meeting ministers and stone-faced officials trying to secure my visa renewal.

Despite my bemoaning the past six months have, without a doubt, been the most memorable of my life. I’ve met many inspiring and brave people. I’ve experienced some wonderful and brutal moments. I feel fortunate to have witnessed all of them. But I will be glad to return to the land of electricity, running water and fuel and rid myself of my wasp-like persona.

This year’s Ramadan is going to be a particularly tough time for Yemenis. I'll be away for less time than Saleh (ongoing visa issues permitting) and look forward to returning with a spring in my step.

There should be a picture at the top of a burning candle in the barred window of my house set in front of a dark Sana'a skyline, but due to a FLC technical glitch you'll just have to imagine it. I'll try again later when I've more patience.

Journalists in Yemen under pressure

2011-03-15T14:08:56Z

Walking home in the orange light of the narrow streets of Sana’a Old City, the sila (sunken road) circling the ancient tower houses was the same as it is every night – deserted - bar the occasional check point of tired looking soldiers wrapped up in trench coats with kafiyas bound around their heads.

I crept home to my bed, exhausted after two busy days of covering the sudden upsurge of violence in the capital. Unlike the previous two mornings my wake up call was not an early morning text message telling of gunfire, attacks or impending violence from activists at the university encampment, now the centre stage of the anti-government protests, but this time came from friend and fellow journalist Laura Kasinof.

Armed police had raided the house I’d left just a few hours earlier, arresting four journalist friends. During the next few frantic calls to contacts with friends in high places their location remained a mystery. The political security and police denied they had them and still hours later the British embassy had no idea where they were being held. Then reports came through that they were at the Immigration Authority, but would be released and given a few days to sort out their paper work. Moments later these hopes were dashed when they were spotted at the airport.

Various excuses have been given for why they were expelled, from illegal entry, to not attending classes at the Arabic language schools who sponsor visas for students. But the reason given during their detention was that it was matter of “national security”. One of the deportees, Oliver Holmes, was pulled aside by an official to be told that coverage of the recent violence was behind his removal. Joshua Maricich was informed he'd over stayed his visa, which still has two weeks to run and his application for renewal had already been made.

In the complex and opaque Yemeni visa system, with constantly changing goal posts, the majority of resident Western freelancers are on student visas, sponsored by local Arabic schools (command of the language is an essential tool here where English speakers are few and far between) with the full knowledge of the Ministry of Information and other government officials that they are working as foreign correspondents. Some have lived here for years on that basis. Yesterday the long-standing mutual understanding between foreign freelancers and authorities disintegrated. The number of permanently based journalists reporting for the UK and US media was halved overnight.

Today, through the state run news agency Saba, the Ministry of Information denied they were journalists and said they were living in hiding. Joshua has lived for years, and Oliver for months, in the house they were taken from and they were all recently invited to (bar Joshua), and attended, a presidential press conference.

Since daily anti-government protests began more than a month ago attacks on and harassment of journalists and photographers have become commonplace. The Yemeni Journalists Syndicate building has been stormed and local news outlets have also been inhibited.

Yesterday’s deportees were not even the first Westerns to be kicked out of the country amid the changing atmosphere in Yemen. But as far as world coverage of events in Yemen are concerned it’s a significant blow.

With just a handful of us left we’re a nervous bunch. For now, all we can do is sit, wait and keep working, while trying not to jump out of our skins every time someone knocks on the door. Getting into the protest area is also an issue as security cordons have to be passed and all of us are familiar western faces amongst many of the senior officers manning the entrances into the spreading tented village, home to thousands of anti-government demonstrators in the west of the capital.

The government stopped issuing visas to journalists weeks ago, due to the “overwhelming number of visas demanded”. If we’re all forced to leave it begs the questions of: What happens next? Does that leave security forces with an open invitation to do what they like, without international eyes watching? Is this the build up to an even greater military crackdown? Questions we don’t know the answer to but are increasingly pressing.

The deported journalists were: Oliver Holmes (Wall Street Journal, Time) Portia Walker (Daily Telegraph, Washington Post) Haley Sweetland Edwards who had returned to Yemen for a few weeks, (Los Angeles Times, Atlantic) and Joshua Maricich, a climbing enthusiast, photographer and researcher who had recently written a government supported book on Yemen.

NOTE (in case it becomes relevant at a later date): I’m in Yemen on a journalist-sponsored visa via my base at the Yemen Times where I work as an editor along with two other western journalists.

Yemen Friday prayers protests: Last (wo)man standing

2011-03-05T15:00:44Z

In the heat of the midday sun orderly rows of coloured prayer mats stretched for the best part of a mile. What should be one of the busiest roads in Sana'a filled with people, squeezing in and around hundreds of tents currently housing around a thousand activists, permanently camping on the road in a spectacular display of people power. The Imam's voice boomed from speakers strapped to telegraph poles. The only other sound came from the birds and small children repeating the preacher's words.

Although the numbers - a 50,000+ ish guesstimate (it's hard to tell when you're on the ground) - might not be as great as other Friday prayers protests around the Ummah, with a population of just over 1.5 million in Yemen's capital, it's equivalent to two million people turning up in London's Trafalgar Square for church on Sunday.

Having watched from a roof-top last week, this Friday I stayed on the ground, to mix with the increasingly diverse crowd of students, tribesmen, families, the unemployed and those fortunate enough to have a job.

After a while the men surrounding me started to nudge each other and whisper, 'bint, bint' ('girl, girl'). Despite my short hair and western dress I'd been rumbled. Ushered down a side street I stood with a dozen other women and their children. Kicking off my shoes in the sandy gateway of someone's house, amongst discarded empty water bottles and can pulls, I faced north towards Mecca, as the men on one side and women on the other bowed, knelt to the ground and touched theirs heads off the array of scarves and patterned mats in perfect unison.

Feeling conspicuous as the only one left standing a late arrival hurried to find a space and shuffled in line next to me. As he spread his undersized carpet on the last visible piece of tarmac in front of him he spotted the small camera in my hand (in order to get through the soldier's checkpoint 200 yards down the road you have to smuggle a camera in via the back pocket of your jeans - they wont frisk a woman). Making a rectangular shape with his hands he followed with a thumbs up.

This video was the view from where I stood yesterday, near Sana'a University, the site of one of the many street encampments across Yemen all calling for an end to President Ali Abdullah Saleh's 32-year rule in ongoing protests which began over six weeks ago and have left up to 30 dead.