MARSADAK: call for the UN Special Envoy for Yemen to incorporate the detained journalists in the current negotiations in Muscat

Dear excellency, Hans Grundberg, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Yemen,

We hope all is well with you and your outstanding Team.

Subject: Incorporating the names of detained journalists into the prisoner exchange list between the Yemeni Government and the Houthi group (Ansar Allah).

 

At the beginning, we highly appreciate your efforts in bringing all parties closer together and reaching an agreement to achieve a new prisoner exchange deal.

The Media Freedoms Observatory in Yemen, the first specialized platform for monitoring press freedoms and advocating for their causes to create a safe media environment and end impunity, would like to draw your attention to the fact that six journalists are still detained in the prisons of the Yemeni Government and the Houthi group (Ansar Allah). Three of them have been forcibly disappeared, with no information known about their fate to date.

Over the past nine years, we have documented more than 2,500 violations against journalists, including 54 cases of killing journalists and media activists, among them two female journalists. Sadly, in all cases, the perpetrators have gone unpunished thus far!

The challenges and systematic illegal practices, faced by journalists and anyone who disagrees with or criticizes the security and economic situation by all parties to the conflict in Yemen, have severely restricted media freedoms. The results of monitoring reveal a frightening shrinkage of media freedoms. The media diversity and margin of freedoms that existed before the current war in Yemen have disappeared. Print newspapers has vanished in areas controlled by the Houthi group (Ansar Allah), except for a limited number of newspapers affiliated with them.

The restrictions on media freedoms extend to all media professionals who find themselves facing difficult choices: either work in media outlets affiliated with the Group (Houthis), leave their areas, or abandon the media profession altogether. Similarly, areas under the control of the Yemen’s internationally recognized Government lack independent and diverse media. With few exceptions, the dominant trend is propagandistic and war-oriented media. Journalists either join this trend or become unemployed and marginalized. Or will be pursued if they choose to work independently.

Such a climate significantly contributes to the destruction of the basis of media freedoms, which is marred by the current media landscape. Journalists no longer carry out their work free from the pressures made by the conflicting parties.

The impunity enjoyed by perpetrators has intensified the targeting of journalists without fear of punishment. This has escalated to the point where unpleasant methods, unprecedented in Yemen, are being employed. Journalists face direct attacks, explosives planted in their vehicles, and threats to their families aimed at terrorizing them into abandoning their journalistic duties. This situation necessitates the international community to intensify efforts to establish legal accountability and to punish the perpetrators of these violations, as these crimes are not subject to a statute of limitations, and those responsible will not escape justice.

Accordingly, we call for:

  • Release of journalists Nabil Al-Saudi and Mohammed Al-Hotami from the prisons of the Houthi group (Ansar Allah).
  • Disclosure of the fate of journalist Wahid Al-Sofi, who has been forcibly disappeared in the prisons of the Houthi group (Ansar Allah) since 2015, and to release him.
  • The annulment of the unjust sentence against journalist Ahmed Maher and his immediate release from the prisons of the Yemeni Government.
  • Disclosure of the fate of journalist Naseh Shaker in the prisons of the Yemeni government and his release.
  • The release of all detainees representing local and international civil society organizations, as well as former employees of foreign embassies operating in Yemen.

Your Excellency, the UN Special Envoy for Yemen,

You are not unaware of the suffering and harsh treatment of journalists in detention, depriving them of medical care, a healthy environment, and appropriate food. Most detained journalists are tried in non-specialized courts and are given harsh sentences without evidence, merely because they are journalists. This is like what happened with journalist Ahmed Maher, who was sentenced to four years in prison, journalist Ali Al-Kathiri, journalist Wafa Al-Matri, and before them journalists Mohammed Al-Salahi and Nabil Al-Saudi, and four journalists who were sentenced to death before being released in a previous UN-brokered exchange deal.

We hope for your urgent intervention to address these grave violations against journalists and to support the creation of a safe environment for press freedom in Yemen. Alongside the suffering of journalists in prison, their families endure additional hardships, including accumulating financial debts due to the costs of pursuing their loved ones’ cases and the deterioration of their own health conditions.

Your Excellency, the UN Special Envoy for Yemen,

We have seen joyful images accompanying the release of the four journalists Abdul Khaleq Emran, Tawfeeq Al Mansouri, Akram Al-Walidi, and Harith Humaid, when they were freed from Houthi detention in April 2023 after eight years of imprisonment, enforced disappearance, and torture, as part of a prisoner exchange deal mediated by UN. We hope to see similar scenes with the rest of the journalists who remain detained.

We trust that you will not abandon your humanitarian and moral duty towards journalists and civil society workers, leaving them to face this uncertain fate, which has become a source of great concern for us and the families of the journalists.

 

Yours sincerely,

Media Freedoms Observatory in Yemen

July 4, 2024