Coup undermined all expression freedom progress, info minister says

[22/09/2017 05:21]

GENEVA-SABA

Yemen had been making a significant progress in freedom of expression from the time it adopted political pluralism in 1990 until the Saleh-Houthi coup came and undermined all of that, said information minister Muammar al-Eryani.

Minister Muammar al-Eryani made the remarks during a meeting with senior international media bandits including the former president of the International Federation of Journalists, Jim Boumelha and the deputy chief of the Federation of Arab Journalists Abdullah al-Bakkali on the sideline of the HRC's 36th session in Geneva on Thursday.

Al-Eryani said the Saleh-Houthi militias' systematic atrocities against journalists in Yemen range from closing press offices to killing journalists, to abduction, forcible disappearance, torture and sentencing to death as happened to Yahya al-Jubeihi who was tried for 10 minutes and sentenced to death in one of the courts run by the radical militias.

Al-Eryani thanked the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for offering a safe haven to scores of Yemeni journalists fleeing the persecution in their home. He also thanked the international organizations which sympathized with them.

Al-Eryni called on the international organizations to do more to pressure on the militias stop the abuses.

The attending journalists condemned the militias' practices, called for supporting Yemeni journalists and called on the world to distinguish – as they interface with Yemen - between the government and the irresponsible militias which complies with no rules and cares about no such a thing as human rights or freedoms.

Meanwhile, al-Eryani said on Friday that his ministry would try to exert all possible efforts to secure the release of journalists detained by the coup militias. He said that the ministry would contact all the international groups advocating freedoms to draw attention to the plight of Yemeni journalists and drum up support and pressure to get them release and to cancel the death sentence that the radical militias' courts handed to veteran report Yahya al-Jubeihi.