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Southern Secessionists Rally in Yemen; Press Freedom Denied

Photo Credit: Fuad Mused

Thousands of separatists rallied in Aden, Yemen Wednesday to demand independence after ”twenty years of oppression and resistance.” Exiled separatist leader Ali Salem al-Baid had called on the “occupying regime to begin negotiations” with southern leaders in order ”to prevent further bloodshed.” A protest organizer Ali Eida said “This huge rally sends a message to the international community that the people of the South want to secede in a peaceful manner” while also saying that if protests were ignored by politicians he and others could “go forward with an armed struggle.”

President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi ”appealed to southern leaders… to join talks on the country’s political future.” The national dialogue was boycotted by Southern self-rule activists, and the resulting plan “to divide Yemen into six federal regions” was rejected “even [by] the moderate wing of the Southern Movement.”

Khaled A. Ziadi writes ”While some saw the unification as incomplete, others saw it simply as unfair.” Peter Salisbury writes there is certainly not a “magic bullet” or “a catch-all solution” to Yemen’s problems, given they “would have arisen irrespective of the model of government selected by delegates at the conference.”

Danya Greenfield and Adam Simpson addressed U.S. drone warfare, writing “no matter how many rank-and-file are killed, new recruits always emerge” due to high poverty, food insecurity, and absent government services, and recommending the U.S. look to remedy these causal factors. Ramzy Baroud adds ”[Yemen] has now been reduced to that of a safe haven for Al Qaida militants in the imagination of the media.”

Meanwhile, “Al Jazeera [Arabic] correspondent Hamdi Al-Bokari and cameraman Sameer Al-Nimri were banned from covering the war in Shabwa.” HRW reports that they “were called last week by the director general of foreign media in the Ministry of Information Shawqi Shaher“ and ordered to “leave the area,” and were forced to evacuate to Sana’a. This incident follows a 2013 HRW report which documents ”20 attacks on journalists.” Yemeni journalists now face threats not just from the government, but also from “supporters of the former government, Huthi rebels, southern secessionists and religious conservatives.” Additionally, the Committee to Protect Journalists writes, ”the local media watchdog Freedom Foundation documented at least 33 cases of threats against journalists in the first half of 2013 alone.”