Yemen’s warring parties are committing serious human rights violations against journalists and media institutions in the country.
A new Human Rights Watch report documents wide-ranging abuses including the widespread use of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture, and other inhuman treatment.
Authorities on all sides of the conflict, including the Houthis, the Southern Transitional Council, and the Yemeni government, have also carried out broader violations against Yemenis’ right to free expression and against the media, including seizing media organizations and intimidating and harassing media workers.
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The repeated attacks have “threatened the lives of dozens of journalists and have gravely undermined freedom of expression in Yemen,” said Niku Jafarnia, Yemen and Bahrain researcher at HRW.
Some journalists who had been detained said they believed the authorities subjected them to more brutal treatment than other detainees to frighten them, and others, so that they wouldn’t report on the authorities’ abuses, mismanagement, and corruption.
In addition to this ongoing harassment and intimidation, many journalists have been killed in Yemen over the last 11 years of fighting, including likely assassinations by warring parties.
But despite these blatant violations of international law, there has been little accountability.
