A car belonging to YemenPortal, was vandalized today. Editor Walid Al-Saqaf indicated in a note that he believes official representatives of the Yemeni government directly responsible. He believes the action was a result of his attempt to provide alternative URLs for his site. He created an alternative domain and emailed it to several hundred subscribers in Yemen. Al-Saqaf is currently in Sweden. His car was parked outside YemenPortal’s office in Sana’a.

It’s bad enough to repress someone’s ability to freely report the news. Direct thuggery is beyond the pale, though, and the government of Yemen, and its leaders, especially President Ali Abdullah Saleh, should feel shame.

Al-Saqaf’s press release follows.

Press Release

Following the ban of its second domain

Unidentified men attack vehicle of YemenPortal.net Sana’a Office
Sanaa – February 11, 2008

Three unidentified men attacked and shattered the front glass (windscreen) of the vehicle operated by YemenPortal.net’s office in Sana’a, Yemen just before midnight on Sunday, February 10.

This comes after a third alternative website domain was set up in a record time after the Yemeni authorities banned the website’s domain for the second successive time. This resistance to the block may have been the motive behind the attack, the website founder and administrator Walid Al-Saqaf said.

Yemeni authorities had previously blocked the original domain of the website (http://yemenportal.net) on Jan 19 and proceeded to block the alternative domain (http://arabiaportal.net/yemen) on Feb 9. The third domain (http://yemenportal.org) was set up immediately after the second domain was blocked.

“We expect the authorities to go on blocking the third domain, after which we will simply launch a fourth. This will go on for as long as it takes.” Al-Saqaf noted.

The attack also comes in a time YemenPortal.net is leading a country-wide campaign against blocking Yemeni websites. The initiative was to allow all Internet users in Yemen to access the full content of all blocked news and opinion websites, which are accessible through the campaign’s website http://yemenportal.net/blocked. The authorities had initiated a new wave of bans against political websites without disclosing any reasons.

Al-Saqaf noted that eye witnesses said a taxi driver and two passengers, of whom one was masked, suddenly stopped near the car and kept on smashing the windscreen with rocks until neighbors started approaching. Then they returned to the taxi and quickly fled the scene.

None of the eyewitnesses were able to read the car’s plate number but some noticed a portrait of President Ali Abdullah Saleh on the back window of the taxi.

A complaint was filed at the closest police station immediately after the attack, which is believed to have been in response to the website’s successful initiative in launching the first anti-blocking campaign of its kind in Yemen.

It is worth noting that the authorities have in the past used various methods and means from sending SMS messages to beating journalists or smashing vehicles. “This is far too familiar”, Al-Saqaf said, adding that “If the attack is intended to threaten us or send us a message of intimidation, I would like to stress that it only strengthens our position and encourages us to continue our mission of fighting for the unblocking of more than a dozen websites that are banned by the authorities.”

Concerned human rights and press freedom organizations in Yemen have pledged to take action to condemn this attack and call upon the authorities to investigate the incident promptly and bring the perpetrators to justice. They also stressed on the need to release the blocked websites, whose ban constitutes a major violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was ratified by the Yemeni government.

“The recent attacks against the press in general and the online media in particular lead us to believe that the government’s inaction in the past have encouraged some elements to attack journalists and media professionals with a sense of immunity.” Al-Saqaf said.

“The wave of website bans and other types of intimidation against the online media is in clear contradiction to the government’s pledges and commitments to bolster freedom of expression. We call upon the government to respect those commitments and urge the international community to help us resist this unprecedented wave of attacks.”

Today, It is allowed for anyone in Yemen to Access Free Kareem campaign. It seems that Yemeni Authorities had received tens of letters asking for releasing this site.

Unfortunately, they blocked my newest blog. It is bad to know that I could not access it from Yemen, and my friend too. I was thinking that it is a technical problem that my blog is new and there is nothing new or hard up to now. I only using it to write some comments and post my articles and reports published in the NP.  By the way, My blog does not contains any “sexy” contents, only my comments about Free Kareem site.

However, Lots of friends outside Yemen said there is no problem with them to open my blog.

Seven months ago, when the Parliament members asked the Minister of Media said that he wants to organize its role only, but it is free for all people in Yemen to get their own blog, and express their own view.

I want to say for His Excellency Hassan Al-Lawzi, it is only less than one week, and I did not finish my blog designing yet.

I hope that they will release it as soon as possible,

Since October, a host of websites have been blocked in Yemen. They include YemenPortal and FreeKareem. YemenPortal was accused of being a threat to national security (it’s simply an aggregator of local content, done for the administrator’s PhD program). CPJ reports that it may have been due to the content on the site.

(YemenPortal administrator Walid) Al-Saqaf said he believes his site may have been blocked after it posted citizen videos of a January 13 protest in the southern port city of Aden. The videos show security forces firing unprovoked at the crowd, he said, in contradiction of the government’s account.

FreeKareem, devoted to the imprisoned Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer, was blocked for having “sexual content.” Yeah. Well. Not so much. No doubt defending a blogger who criticises Islam is the real issue.

Seven other Yemeni sites and who knows how many external ones have been blocked. The Yemeni sites include YemenHurr, Hour’s News, Hdramut, Al-Teef, Al-Yemen, AdenPress, and SoutalGnoub.