Dubai, April 20: Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) criticised on Tuesday the situation of press freedoms in Yemen, saying it was worsening by the day.
RSF “strongly condemns a sharp decline in the press freedom situation since the start of the second half of 2009,” the organisation said.
It described the situation in the war-stricken country as “very serious”.
“The situation of the media is getting worse by the day, with one prosecution after another. The international community must intercede as a matter of urgency,” it said.
The organisation cited more than six ongoing cases against journalists prosecuted for various reasons such as undermining national unity. That was the case of Mohammed al-Maqaleh, editor-in-chief of the socialist party’s Aleshteraki.com website.
Freed last March for “health and humanitarian reasons,” according to a Yemeni official, Maqaleh was on trial for his writings on the war in the north between Shiite rebels and the army, which ended with a February truce.
RSF also highlighted three recent convictions of journalists, seizure of newspapers and the banning of eight of them for their coverage of unrest in the south.
The parliament is currently considering a draft media law, submitted in 2005 by the ruling General People’s Congress, which would send media freedom backwards, said RSF.
“The law would send the Yemeni media back to the situation prevailing in the 1970s and 1980s,” it said.
RSF cited the spokesman of the journalists union, Saeed Thabet, describing the bill as “authoritarian, (and) worse than the law currently in force.”
Foreign media were not spared the media crackdown. Yemeni authorities confiscated the transmission gear of the Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya satellite news channels last March based on claims that they were being used without clearance from Yemeni authorities.
The gear was later returned upon orders from president Ali Abdullah Saleh. RSF said it had not yet received a response from Yemen’s authorities on a request submitted last February for a visa to carry out a fact-finding visit to the impoverished country.
—Agencies