Cartoonist Kamal Sharaf shows Shaye locked up while US Ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein looks on holding the keys. The text says: Freedom for the Journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye

Yemeni journalist Abdul-Elah Haidar Shaye, imprisoned in Sana’a since August 2010, is set to be released “soon”, according to a new presidential order. But this is not the first time a Yemeni president has pledged to set him free.

Shaye, sentenced in January 2011 to five years in prison for allegedly being a “media man for al-Qaeda’, should have walked free a month later. Weeks after his sentence was handed down in the Special Criminal Court for Security Affairs, then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh issued a pardon for his release. But a day later Washington stepped in. In a phone call between Barack Obama and his Yemeni counterpart, the US president “expressed concern” over Shaye’s impending release. The presidential pardon was never carried out. Shaye has remained in the capital’s notorious Political Security prison ever since.

On Tuesday night the office of Saleh’s sucessor, President Hadi confirmed that “there is an order from the president to release him [Shaye] soon”, without elaborating on when this is likely to happen. Shaye’s family remain sceptical about the order that was given about a week ago. “We’ve heard nothing of the sort and it’s like the same as previous promises. So far this is the fourth time Hadi has made this promise,” said Shaye’s brother, Khaled.

During his trial — at which the journalist turned down legal representation as he refused acknowledge the legitimacy of the court — Shaye indicated the real reason behind his detention was his reporting on US strikes and specifically the deaths of civilians including 14 women and 21 children killed in a sea-launched cruise missile strike on the village of al-Majala in December 2009.  Despite the Yemeni government claiming they were responsible for destroying an “al-Qaeda training camp” Shaye blamed the killings on America after visiting the village in the province of Abyan and finding US made bomb remnants.

Seven months after the al-Majala bombing and following his criticism of both the Yemeni and US Governments, Shaye was abducted by Political Security Organisation [PSO] gunmen. Beaten and threatened before being released, in response Shaye went back on television. A month later, in August 2010, his house was raided by Yemen’s elite US-trained and funded Counter Terrorism troops. Shaye was once again beaten and tortured, according to the Yemeni human rights organisation HOOD, during 34 days in solitary confinement with no access to a lawyer or family members.

In an October 2010 court hearing, after more than two hours of the prosecution presenting its case, Shaye was allowed just a few minutes to respond. In those moments he suggested what he believes is the real motive behind his incarceration. “When they hid murderers of children and women in Abyan, when I revealed the locations…it was on that day they decided to arrest me,” he shouted from behind the bars of cell alongside the courtroom.

Leaked diplomatic cables released shortly after after the conclusion of his trial confirmed Sahye’s accusations that the US had indeed carried out the al-Majala bombing.

In an interview last year with the US Ambassador to Sana’a, Gerald Feierstein reiterated to me America’s interest in his case. “Haidar Shaye is in jail because he was facilitating al-Qaeda and its planning for attacks on Americans and therefore we have a very direct interest in his case and his imprisonment,” he said. No evidence has ever been produced by either the US or Yemeni Government to support the claim that Shaye was facilitating any such attacks.

Yemeni journalists have repeatedly expressed their lingering fear over America’s meddling in Shaye’s case. Many became afraid to report on air strikes. One Yemeni journalist, like Shaye a specialist on al-Qaeda, renamed himself an “analyst of Islamic groups” and refused to do TV interviews especially with Al Jazeera after what happened to Shaye.

Since Shaye’s imprisonment in 2010 the US resumed its drone strike programme in Yemen during 2011, following a year-long break. Last year the number of strikes reached an all-time high, surpassing the number carried in Pakistan for the first time, according to monitoring groups.

In February last year Shaye went on hunger strike, but was persuaded by his family to halt the protest at his continued detention when his health rapidly deteriorated.

Human rights and press freedom organisations have continued to demand his release. On World Press Freedom Day last week the International Federation of Journalists [IFJ] reiterated its call for an end to his incarceration in a letter to the Yemeni president. In a meeting with IFJ president Jim Boumelha last year Hadi had promised to do “everything in his power” to free Shaye.

It’s unclear if this most recent order will be carried out, or if Washington will once again seek to keep Shaye behind bars.

The US Embassy in Sana’a failed to respond to requests for comment on the presidential release order.

Iona Craig is a freelance journalist based in Sana’a, Yemen and The Times of London Yemen Correspondent. She also writes for USA Today, The Sunday Times and regularly contributes to The National (UAE) and Index on Censorship
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Take Two: Islam blasphemy riots now self-fulfilling prophecy

It would be very easy to cast, as many commentators have so far, the latest riots in response to the Islamophobic film The Innocence of Muslims, as another example of intolerant Muslims lacking a funny bone. The Rushdie affair, the Danish cartoons, the murder of Van Gogh — surely the latest saga fits neatly into a pattern of evidence suggesting Muslims are over sensitive and violent. After all, critics will argue, Christians are regularly derided through the arts and media and they don’t go around burning embassies and killing people.  Only the situation is hardly analogous. Muslims perceive this as a dominant majority insulting and humiliating a disgruntled and feeble minority. Ignoring the violent minority, the truth is, the protests and anger across the Arab world are about much more than the usual “free speech” versus “Islam” narrative.

In fact, at the heart of the unrest is a powerful current of anti-Americanism rooted in imperialist policies and bolstered dictatorships.

Firstly, although the film may have been the catalyst for riots, it would be wrong to assume that all the protests have exactly the same cause. The murder of American embassy staff in Libya appears to have been the work of an Al Qaeda fringe which had been plotting the revenge of one its senior leaders and used the protest against the film as a smokescreen for its attack. However there and elsewhere, the anger of the masses has appeared to morph into something much broader – a reflection of anti-American sentiment grounded in America’s historically fraught relationship to the region.

This is hardly the first demonstration of anger against western targets in any of these countries.

For those with a short memory, it was only last month that a pipe bomb exploded outside the US consulate and both the Red cross and other Western aid organisations have come under fire in recent months. It is misguided to think that NATO intervention in support of the rebels against Gaddafi somehow erased deep-seated grievances against the US, not least the sense of humiliation in the Arab world stemming from decades of Western domination. Sure, the west may have helped get rid of Gaddhafi when it was expedient, but for a long time, we traded quite happily with the man whilst he brutally repressed his people. In some cases, we even helped him do it.  A recent Human Rights Watch report, Delivered into Enemy Hands: US-Led Abuse and Rendition of Opponents to Gaddafi’s Libya details the stories of Libyan opposition figures tortured in US-run prisons in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and then delivered back to Libya, with full awareness that they were going to be tortured or possibly killed. Even in the “new Libya”, not all sections of the revolution feel the outcome of the recent elections was truly representative of popular feeling. Not to mention Egypt, where Mubarak, whom Hillary Clinton once described as a “close family friend”, tortured and killed innumerable dissidents in a US-backed dictatorship. To think that the Arab Spring would transform popular opinion concerning the US’s role in the region is ludicrous. And that’s before we even get to Iraq.

Broken by poverty, threatened by drones, caught in the war between al Qaeda and the US, to many Arab Muslims, the film represents an attack on the last shelter of dignity — sacred beliefs —  when all else has been desecrated.

It is no surprise that some of the worst scenes of violence come from Yemen, where US policy has resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians, fuelling anger against a regime whose brutality and corruption has left the country ranking amongst the poorest in the Arab world. Given that it is also one of the countries where people have the least access to computers and the internet, it is also entirely likely that many protestors never even saw the film. It also seems unlikely anyone believed the film was actually produced by the American government. Though many might have believed the US government could act to restrict the film’s diffusion, censorship being altogether common in many of these countries, the focus on American symbols — embassies, American schools, even KFC — suggests the roots of popular anger are not merely tarnished religious pride.

These symbols of America were not the unwitting target of frustration over a film – rather the film has provided an unwitting focal point for massive and widespread anger at US foreign policy in the region. If the Arab revolutions let the dictators know exactly how people felt about their repression, these demonstrations should be read as equally indicative of popular anguish with the US’s role in the region.

The film is merely the straw that broke the camel’s back — to stand in consternation at the fact a single straw could cripple such a sturdy beast is to be naïve or wilfully blind to the accumulated bales which made the straw so hard to carry.

This is not an attempt to minimise the offence caused by the film — Muhammad is a man whose status in the eyes of many Muslims, cannot be overstated. When your country has been bombed, you’ve lost friends and family, possibly your livelihood and home, dignity is pretty much all you have left.

The producers of the film may have known very little about film-making, but they knew lots about how to cause a stir. Despite its obscure origins, references to an “Israeli” director living in the US, to a “100 Jewish donors” who allegedly provided “5 million dollars”, to a hazy “Coptic network” – all played into a well-known register. When two out of five Arabs live in poverty, a five million dollar insult has more than a slight sting to it.

Those who sought to bring winter to an Arab spring and possibly destabilise a US election, were keenly aware of the impact those words would have, situating the film within on-going tensions between Israel and the Arab world and stirring up the hornet’s nest of minority relations in a region where they remain unsettled.

In a tweet, the Atheist academic Richard Dawkins decried the events by lambasting “these ridiculous hysterical Muslims”. In so doing, he, like others, not only failed to read these events for what they are — political protests against US meddling, but he also failed to recognise the basic humanity of the protestors. To dismiss deep anger as mere hysteria is to diminish to decades of oppression experienced by many Muslims, particularly in the Arab world, often with US complicity.

If you deny any relationship between the systematic discrimination of Muslims and stigmatisation of Islam and the overreaction of the Muslim community to offensive jokes, or films, or cartoons, then you are only left with essentialist explanations of Muslim hysteria and violence. These protests aren’t about a film — they’re about the totality of ways in which Muslims have felt humiliated over decades. The actions of a virulent fringe shouldn’t overshadow the peaceful majority, nor should it impede our ability to recognise the message of frustration and humiliation coming from the Arab and Muslim world.

Reporting on these “clashes of culture” as somehow indicative of Islam’s essential incompatibility with the West conveniently omits the realities of Muslim oppression global. Before we start searching for the nebulous network behind the film, or the reasons why “Muslims are so prone to getting offended”, we would do better to actually consider the conditions that have contributed to rendering the mass dehumanisation of particular group of people socially unobjectionable and do well to remember that the right to protest is just as central to the concept of free speech, as the right to make offensive movies.

Myriam Francois-Cerrah is a writer, journalist and Postgraduate researcher at Oxford University. A version of this piece appeared on Myriam’s blog. 

Also read:

Kenan Malik on The Satanic Verses and free speech and Why free expression is now seen as an enemy of liberty

Sara Yasin on France, Charlie Hebdo and the meaning of Mohammed

When we succumb to notions of religious offence, we stifle debate, writes Salil Tripathi

Sherry Jones on why UK distributors refused to handle her book The Jewel of Medina

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As events unfolded in Tunisia and Egypt in January 2011 and mass protests spread to the Arabian Peninsula. Slowly people started finding their voice. Although in early February, anti-government protests had been ongoing for several days, there was a feeling of safety in numbers and solidarity amongst the attendees of mass demonstrations.

But in those early weeks, I watched a youth protester become embroiled in a furious debate on a public bus in Sana’a. The youth sparred with an elderly man who had lived through Yemen’s civil war of the 1960s and witnessed the fall of the Imamate, and many moved away from the young student as he raged over the heads of passengers about Yemen’s long standing leader. Others looked on nervously before the driver demanded the youth’s silence. He refused, deciding instead to disembark rather than submit. The brief but vociferous exchange left the remaining occupants in stunned silence. From these small beginnings and expression of years of frustration, Yemen’s revolution and a year of political unrest grew.

Compared to its regional neighbours, pre-2011 Yemenis enjoyed relative freedom. Multiple political opposition parties existed, a small but unwavering independent press operated in contrast to the state media and the multiple government aligned newspapers. Despite this apparent tolerance, when the protest movement took off after the fall of Egypt’s President Mubarak on February 11, Yemeni journalists covering demonstrations calling for the end of Saleh’s 33-year rule, were amongst the first victims of a campaign of intimidation and attacks. Six journalists were killed during last year’s violence, more than any other country caught up in the Arab Spring, according to International Press Institute figures. Between 1994 and 2008, nine Yemeni journalists were killed in mysterious car accidents or other questionable accidental deaths .

But since a new unity government — including new heads of the Ministry of Information and Ministry for Human Rights — formed last month, following Saleh’s signing of a Gulf and UN-brokered transfer of power deal in November, Yemen’s media has experienced a significant shift. The staunch support for Saleh and his General People’s Congress party across the state media has changed dramatically. For the first time pictures of anti-government demonstrations were run on the front page of government aligned newspapers, whilst the Ministry of defence weekly newspaper, 26 September, printed accusations of corruption against its own editor, marking a new phase in protests across the country.

In December, separate to, but emboldened by 12 months of anti-government demonstrations, civil servants and workers at government institutions began their own small but in several cases effective demonstrations , civil servants and workers at government institutions began their own small but in several cases effective demonstrations – anti-corruption rallies. Labelled Yemen’s “parallel revolution” from Sana’a police headquarters to the coast guard in Aden workers have gone out on strike demanding the removal of corrupt bosses. The latest ongoing walkout by members of Yemen’s air force began on January 22, disrupting flights at Sana’a airport, which also acts as Yemen’s main air force base, as protesting airmen demanded the removal of the air force chief, also President Saleh’s half-brother, Mohammed Saleh al-Ahmer. The mutiny has reportedly spread to three more airbases across the country. The Yemeni people have found their voice and the power of peaceful protest as a way of expressing not only their dissatisfaction against the outgoing president Saleh — who left the country on 22 January for medical treatment in the US — but are having a real impact in the removal of several officials.

The Gulf and UN-brokered deal, which is now being implemented, falls short of most people’s expectations, in particular the immunity law passed by parliament last weekend that gives protection from prosecution to Saleh for “politically motivated crimes” and all those acting for him “in their official capacity.” The bill was described by Human Rights Watch as unlawful and “an affront to victims and a blow to justice.” Next month’s election should be an historic moment in a country where nearly two generations have only known one leader. But the election of Vice-President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi is a formality rather than a diplomatic process to finally remove Mr Saleh from office.  After a year of political unrest and with the military and air force still under the control of Saleh’s sons, nephews and extended family members , his influence has yet to end, and Yemen’s future remains uncertain.

Crucially the transition initiative excludes three isolated groups: the pre-existing Southern Movement and their demand for secession, the northern Houthi rebels, calling for autonomy, who have fought six wars against the government since 2004, in addition to the 2011 protest movement.

2011 in Yemen will not only be remembered as a year of blood shed and turmoil and the year a Yemeni activist , Tawakkol Karman, became the first female from the Arab world to win a Nobel Peace Prize, but also for a notable and seemingly irreversible shift: Yemenis are no longer willing to accept years of endemic corruption throughout the state system. As the country moves into a two year period of transition, ahead of parliamentary elections in 2014, it will be up Yemenis external to the political process to maintain pressure on the unity government and politicians in order for any real change to take place.

Iona Craig is a freelance journalist based in Sana’a

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One of the youngest ever recipients and the first female in the Arab world to be awarded the prize, the 32-year-old mother of three has been an outspoken critic of the Yemen government and a long running advocate for human rights and press freedom.

The first time I met Karman was last year whilst covering the trial of Yemeni journalist Abdul-Elah Haidar Shaye for Index on Censorship. As the president of Women Journalists Without Chains she was already an active campaigner for political prisoners and a regular organiser of demonstrations outside the parliament in the Yemen capital, Sana’a.

Her brief detention in January for leading protests against the regime instigated further demonstrations. It was her call for an Egypt-style permanent sit-in to a small crowd of a few dozen youth protesters outside Sana’a University one night in mid-February, alongside fellow female activist, Belqes Beso Al-lahabi, that initiated the pitching of tents on the streets of the capital. The encampment spread rapidly and now stretches for more than three miles through the west of the city, housing thousands protesters calling for an end to President Ali Abdullah Saleh 33-year rule.

“This award is for all Yemeni people and all the youth in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria,” Tawakkol said today in an interview.

Karman has at times divided opinion amongst some protesters for her close ties to the conservative Islamic political opposition party, Islah, which the independent youth have sought to distance themselvs from. Her encouragement for activists to march into obvious danger and violent confrontations with the security forces has also caused controversy. But today’s announcement has been seen by Yemen’s demonstrators as not just a reward to Karman but a recognition of their attempts to peacefully overthrow Saleh and his regime in a long running campaign that has left up to 500 protesters dead.

In Yemen’s deeply conservative society, where most women wear the face-covering veil of the niqab, Karman chose to unveil herself for the first time in public shortly before speaking at a human rights conference in the US.

Young female activist, Sarah Ahmed, who joined Karman’s demonstrations back in mid-January, said the Nobel laureate was, and continues to be, a huge inspiration to her and all Yemeni women.

“She gave us a glimpse of what we could achieve, of what happened in Tunisia and then Egypt. Her greatest accomplishment was breaking the fence that society builds around women. She was the first woman to break that fence, to cross the line. We no longer fear crossing that line because of her.”

Iona Craig is a freelance journalist based in Sana’a, Yemen. She is currently writing from London. Follow her on Twitter @ionacraig

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