The Redhunter

My *cousin* and our good friend Abdulkarim al-Khaiwanii, editor of al-Shoura newspaper in Yemen, Yemen's main reformist voice, democracy advocate, was imprisoned from last September to March when he recieved an anmesty. The charges were insulting the president, actually he wrote some very hot articles about Saleh planning on giving the presidency to his son. This is the guy who wrote the letter about democracy and we made the petition. OK? (Also he hates the jihaddis as much as me. And they hate him back.)

Once he was released, of course he continued writing the truth, like about nine year old children in prison becasue they're Shites, how in Saada soldiers were throwing women and children from the windows and then shooting them on the ground, and just recently about the massive corruption of President Saleh who is stealing the millions from a generation of dreadfully poor children. Some reports say Saleh is worth 20 billion at this point.

Also after al-Khaiwanii started republishing the newspaper, he published my last six articles on Yemen in Arabic in al-Shoura.

Also he's getting serious death threats and wrote about in al-Wasat newspaper. He'a a very couragous guy.

OK, following so far? Good, that was the easy part. They are very tricky.

al-Shoura is the paper of the Popular Forces Union (PFU) political party. The party is very moderate and democracy oriented. It has been calling for political reform and criticizing the brutal ethnic cleansing of the Shiites in Saada.

The security guard of the PFU party headquarters (who is not a member of the party) recently went into the PFU headquarters with some other thugs, took control of the building, and held the party leader at gunpoint for several days. (Do we all remember the kidnapped guy? He is also with this party and was another seperate target. ) At that time, the security gurad also went to al-Shoura and stole all the computers and equiptment.

After a few weeks, there was an arrest warrent for the security guard issued by the prosecutor. The police go to arrest him. He shoots at them. THE POLICE LEAVE AND DO NOT RETURN.

So a few days ago, the security guard goes to the building of al-Shoura newspaper, with guns and takes it over. And publishes the paper. With bogus content. So the security guard now is in control of two buildings: the PFU party headqarters and the al-Shoura newspaper building.

Oh BTW the story from the sleezy brutal immoral Salafist Yemeni government is that its an internal party dispute and the gunman wants to reform the party.

Also al-Shoura is normally published by the independent printing press (of the recently murdered Mohammed Salem Al-Sagheer) that serves the majority of opposition parties. This issue of al-Shoura (the one produced by the gunman) was printed by the Yemeni government's printing press.

al-Khaiwani goes to publish his paper with some brutal articles on corruption in it, and the government shuts down the printing press.

The Socialist Party, which has a fatwa on it for advocating a secular government (one of their leaders was assasinated), calls the government attacks on the PFU "political terrorism."

You can go to her site for the full story, but I think you get the picture. Here's an article with good information about what's going on in Yemen, hat tip Winds of Change.

This post is to ask you, dear reader, to take a moment and send an email to the relevant authorities on the subject of "In support of al-Khaiwanii and al-Shoura" or "in support of a Free Press in Yemen"
or "in support of a Free Press in Yemen"

So if you'd like to annoy a dictator, take a minute and send an email of protest to the following addresses. Or you can go to Jane's blog where she has an email link already set up.

ambassador@yemenembassy.org
nic@y.net.ye (National Yemeni Informatin Center)
yemen-info@y.net.ye
political@yemenembassy.org
media@yemenembassy.org
congressional@yemenembassy.org

You can also write to our government to let them know that we are following this closely. A good place to start is with your two Senators and congressman. You can find your senator here and your congressman here.

Before posting I sent all the Yemeni's, and I also contacted my senators and congressman.

It only takes a minute. Let's see if we can make a difference.