Stories about Yemen

The Second Decade of Middle East Internet

  24 March 2010

In its second decade in the Middle East, the Internet has been increasingly challenging many of the region's governments – specifically dictatorships that impose strict limitations on civil freedoms. It has brought about the formation of pressure groups for social and political change on FaceBook, allowed for real-time coverage of...

Yemen: Editor of an opposition website kidnapped

  21 September 2009

On the night of Friday, September 18th, 2009, the Yemeni Editor of the opposition Socialist Party's website, Al Eshteraki, Mohammed al Maqaleh has been kidnapped in the capital Sana'a by security forces. According to eyewitness reports cited by the International Federation of Journalists : five gun wielding masked men in...

MENA: Introducing, “The Circumventer”

  24 May 2009

Alexandra Sandels, from MENASSAT, writes her interview with Walid Al-Saqaf, a Sweden-based Yemeni Internet expert, regarding the launch of his new program Al-Kasir (means the circumventer in Arabic) – during a summit on blogging in Cairo which was entitled “Blogging for the Future“. Al-Kasir, which is currently available in its...

Yemeni authorities prevents 6 newspapers from distribution

4 May 2009

Yemeni government ordered the confiscation of six national newspapers, whose copies were pulled from the news stands and markets across the country yesterday alleging their role in promoting secessionism and anti-unity rhetoric. The move, according to observers, is unprecedented in recent Yemeni history and marks a serious downturn in the country's level of press freedom, which had already suffered several blows in the recent past.

Yemeni online journalist sends urgent appeal after death threats and hacking of his website

  6 February 2009

Mohamed Al-Jabali, the editor of Akhbaralasr news website is the latest casualty in a wave of intimidations targeting bloggers and online journalists in Yemen. In a statement made yesterday, Al-Jabali appealed for protection after receiving death threats in the capital Sanaa from the regime’s security apparatus. This comes just after his website was also hacked. The hackers, whom Al-Jabali said are elements of the regime, published a sarcastic entry on the front page with a picture of a monkey and an insult on the owner of the website Al-Jabali.

Yemeni blogger appeals to prevent possible assassination

  23 November 2008

In a rather emotional entry posted on his blog, Nashwan Abdu Ali Ghanim, a Yemeni blogger with blogs on maktoobblogs.com and kitab.com called upon international advocacy groups and the Arab Bloggers Union to come for his rescue upon escaping 'three failed assassination attempts'. Ghanim believes that his latest blog entry noting the involvement of senior Yemeni officials in the plotting of the attack carried out against the U.S. embassy in Sana'a on September 17, 2008 triggered a new wave of harassments and life-threatening acts.

Yemen: Loui Has Been Set Free!

  23 September 2008

Yemen Hurr website announced yesterday in a press release that its founder and editor-in-chief Loui Al-Moayed has been released from prison yesterday after about more than 70 days in detention. In a press release, the website thanked all those organizations and advocates who fought hard for his release from a...

Yemen blocks Maktoob blogging platform

26 March 2008

Maktoobblog.com, one of the most popular Arab blogging platform, has been recently blocked in Yemen cutting off Yemeni Internet users from the more than 46960 blogs the service hosts. According to MaktoobBlog, there are currently 1226 Yemeni blogs hosted by the service. All of them disappeared from the Yemeni Internet....

Yemen blocks independent news websites

26 January 2008

Numerous Yemeni websites have been blocked recently by government-controlled ISPs. Among them is the popular YemenPortal (English version of the site here), Yemen’s first multi-source news crawler and search engine, which extracts headlines from news sites that are being blocked by the authorities. YemenPortal is inviting Yemeni internet users to...