Journalist Abdul-Elah Haidar Shaye should have been released from prison as part of concessions to protesters in Yemen. But a phonecall from the US president has kept him behind bars. Iona Craig reports
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In Sana’a the opposition was outfoxed by President Saleh — but protests in provincial cities show the public’s anger has not abated. Iona Craig reports
As Cairo’s Tahrir Square and surrounding area spiraled into chaos,the central square of the same name (Liberation) in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, was inhabited by pro-Saleh supporters in oversized tents.
Despite two opposing demonstrations taking place in the capital — pro- and anti-government — the feared violence on Yemen’s “day of rage” failed to materialise on Thursday, at least in Sana’a.
To the east of the country, in the coastal city of Mukkalla, the main city of Hadramaut province, at least one person was reportedly shot when government security forces opened fire on demonstrators. Other major protests took place in Taiz, Ibb and the southern city of Aden, where 22 people were arrested, according to local press.
Unfortunately there is no western media coverage of the provincial cities and as far as the world’s press was concerned, Yemen’s “day of rage” rather fizzled out. Tahrir Square in Sana’a couldn’t have offered a scene of greater contrast to that of Cairo’s. In Yemen’s capital, the day turned into a massive chewing session of the mildly narcotic leaf, qat, by pro-government supporters as they settled in to large wedding-style tents.
President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been extremely clever in his management of events here. After 32 years in power, he has become something of an expert at keeping his job.
Since the knock-on effect of Tunisia’s uprising began to be felt and protests in Yemen mounted, the president has announced a string of welfare reforms to appease the people and on the eve of Thursday’s protests, he declared that he would not stand for re-election at the end of his term in 2013. He made the same declaration in 2005 before standing as president in 2006. Saleh also reached out to opposition parties on Wednesday by conceding on a four-member electoral committee, stating that it would now include two opposition members. The coalition of opposition parties, the JMP, has so far boycotted the election process, due in April.
The president’s PR machine has been so slick that his supporters were ready and waiting to cheer him on — and call on him not to stand down in 2013 — before he had even made the announcement in an emergency parliament meeting on Wednesday. The takeover of the capital’s main square meant that planned anti-government demonstrators were forced to switch location at the last minute to Sana’a University.
Despite a distinct build up in security — soldiers occupied every major junction and street corner in the capital on Thursday — the two sets of demonstrations passed off peacefully without ever meeting. In the rest of the country where the international press does not tread, events were less passive.
On Friday in Sana’a there were no spontaneous follow-ups to yesterday’s demonstrations, organised by the opposition. Yemenis are so far reluctant to pick up the baton from the Egyptians. What’s happening in the rest of Yemen is less clear and may be more crucial than events in the capital.
Iona Craig is a freelance journalist and editor at the Yemen Times, Sana’a.
Inspired by unrest in Egypt and Tunisia, the opposition has staged massive protests demanding President Saleh’s resignation but so far there is no sign of a grass-roots move for change. Iona Craig reports
Human Rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC was this week awarded the New York Bar Association’s annual award for distinction in law and international affairs. In his acceptance speech he proposed new legal principles for whistleblowers:
The First Amendment to the US Constitution is based on Madison’s principle that government information should be the people’s information too. I currently have a client, in Mr Julian Assange, who takes Madison’s principle to what some politicians and diplomats see as extremes. WikiLeaks has certainly made people around the world better informed about what their rulers do not tell them, but to tell the US Embassy instead. This is not the place to discuss my controversial client, other than to express the hope that he remains alive to give me instructions. Joe Biden and Mick Huckabee want him treated like a terrorist, Rush Limbaugh yearns for him “to die from lead poisoning from a bullet in the brain”, while Sarah Palin, as ever shooting from the lip, says “he should be hunted down like Bin Laden” (I suppose that would give him nine more years of freedom).
These shrill, exaggerated voices calling for the messenger to be killed come unhappily from the land of the First Amendment. WikiLeaks, whatever its failings, has at least enlightened the people of many countries around the world, from Tunisia to Indonesia, who now realise what their governments have been up to and how truly corrupt those governments are. It might be thought that the most astonishing secret revealed by WikiLeaks is that US diplomacy is both principled and pragmatic and that most foreign leaders place upon the United States the heavy burden of world leadership, most urgently in dealing with Iran and the prospect of a nuclear bomb in the hands of mullahs without mercy.
It can only diminish US leadership and dim the beacon of the First Amendment, to raise that old blunderbuss the Espionage Act of 1917, death penalty and all, and aim it beyond the jurisdiction at a publisher who is the citizen of a friendly country. Nor can it be helpful to America’s reputation for respecting due process to amend it retrospectively, as Senator Lieberman has suggested. What the WikiLeaks phenomenon calls for, surely, is a cool-headed appraisal not only of US government classification policy — these cables were apparently accessibly to over 2 million public servants, including 22 year olds — but to developing international media law principles for dealing with worldwide publishers of national security information.
A sensible rule might contain these principles:
1. Citizens everywhere have a democratic right to know what a government does in their name;
2. Governments and their public servants bear sole responsibility for protecting properly classified information;
3. Outsiders who receive or communicate confidential government information should not be prosecuted unless they have obtained it by fraud or bribery or duress;
4. National security exceptions should be precisely defined, should protect the identity of sources who are at risk of reprisals but should not stop whistleblowers from revealing human rights violations – the public has, at the very least, a right to know when a war fought in its name is killing innocent civilians through illegal targeting decisions.
I do not advance these principles as definitive but as the basis for a debate that the US Justice Department should be prepared to engage in with publishers – the New York Times, Der Spiegel and The Guardian and Mr Assange included. It might end in an agreement that could be the basis for injunctive action in national courts, but not for criminal prosecution of publishers. That, surely, is wholly antipathetic to the spirit of the First Amendment.