Some goings on in Yemen are so peculiar and unbelievable as to be Orwellian. Please read the letter below from Walid Al-Saqaf, admin for Yemen Portal. He’s put up with harassment in the last few months, as have many Yemeni journalists and citizen news sites. Now he and his colleagues may find themselves up against a death penalty charge. For reporting the news.

Dear colleagues,

It’s been a grueling two and half months since yemenportal.net was blocked from access of Internet users in Yemen and now all two alternative domains (arabiaportal.net, yemenportal.org) are also banned.

This week, the government’s Minister of Information threatened to file lawsuits against news websites on the justification of ‘inciting hatred’ or ‘harming national interests’ and the other usual excused they often use to prosecute journalists. The threat is even more severe for websites because the government would use the penal code instead of the press law. This means that website owners could get up to death penalties. (Reports in Arabic)

Furthermore, the Minister of Interior ganged up with the Minister of Communication to work on a dubious law to criminalize some acts on the Internet, which I believe is a step to criminalize acts that are deemed to damage the ‘country’s interests’, which may even include criticizing the President or the unity of Yemen. (Report in Arabic)

Nonetheless, websites are challenging those threats and many have expressed their support to the portal, which is leading a nationwide campaign against website censorship. We have recently set up our own online SSL web-based proxy that is confined to websites banned for political content only. The move, I was told, infuriated the the Minister of Communication, which have quickly blocked our alternative domain (yemenportal.org).

Hence, I resorted to activating http://yemenportal.info and the SSL port of the site to have some access it on https://yemenportal.net. But this struggle is far from over and your unwavering support will be greatly appreciated.

Furthermore, attached you will find a press release about the new blog that we set up to help campaign for the unblocking of the website. The blog is at http://freeyemenportal.org and it was possible with the generous support of MidEast Youth and the personal involvement of its director and good friend Esra’a Al Shafei.

You can do many things to support our campaign. You can sign up as a member, grab the ‘Unblock YemenPortal.net!’ banner and place it anywhere on your website/blog, sign the petition, and let your members know about our ongoing struggle.

Issuing a statement or seeking ways to collaborate to expose those violations of press freedom will help us promote our case and manage to put more pressure on the authorities in Yemen.

Kindly help us in whichever way you can. This is the moment of truth.

Sincerely,

Walid Al-Saqaf
Administrator
yemenportal.net (and behalf of all blocked Yemeni websites)