All Content Related to Yemen

Yemen

miriam — Wed, 09 May 2007 18:21:41 -0400

Background

The press in Yemen operates under the careful eye of a government hostile to independent reporting on political and social issues. Newspapers have been closed and journalists have been arrested, interrogated, imprisoned, fined, and banned from publication for their coverage of sensitive topics; reports of threats and physical attacks are also numerous.1

In 2005, the government and unidentified parties thought to be associated with government security forces intensified harassment of journalists and political critics. Human rights problems include limitations of citizens' ability to change the government, acknowledged torture, significant restrictions on freedom of press and assembly, and not so many restrictions on speech.2

Internet in Yemen

Yemen lacks a robust telecommunications and information communications technology (ICT) sector. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimates that less than 1 percent of Yemen’s population uses the Internet (0.87 users per 100 inhabitants) and that only 300,000 PCs exist in the country (1.5 per 100 inhabitants).3 Many cannot afford—and are simply unfamiliar with—the equipment and services needed to access the Internet.4 Only 9 out of every 100 inhabitants is a telephone subscriber.5

Yemen is serviced by two ISPs: YemenNet, which is a service of the government's Public Telecommunication Corporation (PTC),6 and TeleYemen's Y.Net, which is part of the government's PTC but is managed by FranceTelecom.7

Businesses own 60 percent of Internet subscriber accounts, while government and educational institutions own only 3 percent of subscriber accounts.8 Far fewer women than men access the Internet, which may be because the primary Internet access locations are Internet cafés (61 percent) and work (24 percent), with home Internet availability at considerably less (13 percent). Only 2 percent access the Internet from schools.9 By mid-2005, the number of Internet cafés in Yemen reached 736.10

Legal and regulatory frameworks

The Ministry of Telecommunication and Information Technology (MTIT) grants ISP licenses;11 PTC, a branch under the MTIT, is responsible for the management and growth of telecommunications in Yemen.12

ISPs impose restrictions on the use of Internet services, preventing subscribers from accessing or transmitting certain content. The terms and conditions set by TeleYemen (aka Y.Net) state: “Access to applications which transmit or receive live video or audio, or make similar demands on the capacity of the network, constitutes an unreasonable usage which may affect the performance of the network, and is not permitted.”13 Also covered are customer responsibilities, including prohibitions on “sending any message which is offensive on moral, religious, communal, or political grounds” (6.1.1).14 Additionally, TeleYemen reserves the right to control access “and data stored in the Y.Net system in any manner deemed appropriate by TeleYemen” (7.1).15 Finally, section 6.3.3 admonishes subscribers that TeleYemen will “report to the competent authorities, any use or attempted use of the Y.Net service which contravenes any applicable Law of the Republic of Yemen.”16

Yemen’s Press and Publications Law, passed in 1990, subjects publications and broadcast media to broad prohibitions and harsh penalties.17 This law theoretically establishes a press that "shall be independent and shall have full freedom to practice its vocation," but that must operate "within the context of Islamic creed, within the basic principles of the Constitution, goals of the Yemeni Revolution, and the aim of solidifying national unity." 18

The Press and Publications Law further states that local journalists must be Yemeni citizens and must obtain Press Cards from the Ministry of Information. Foreign journalists must be accredited to receive Press Cards. Press Cards can be revoked by the Ministry of Information without any reason given, and this revocation requires the former holder to leave Yemen unless they have an independent reason for residency.19

A recent example of the implementation of this law is the conviction and fine handed down in December 2006 to the editor of the Yemen Observer for reprinting the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The Yemen Observer’s license was revoked and the newspaper was closed down in February 2006 for three months after republishing fragments of the Danish cartoons.20 Interestingly, the Web site of the newspaper was not targeted or blocked by the authorities.

A new draft of the law, proposed in 2005, was rejected by the Yemen Journalists Syndicate (YJS) as even more repressive than the existing 1990 law.21 Despite a promise by the Yemeni president to reform the media laws and abolish imprisonment penalty in publishing offenses, Yemeni journalists are subject to violation by the government, the ruling party, opposition parties, and religious groups alike.22

The draft law "ignored the question of the electronic media freedom, putting an end to the state ownership and monopoly over broadcast media. Rather, it went on controlling the websites just like print media."23

ONI testing results

ONI ran in-country tests in 2006 on Yemen's two ISPs, YemenNet and TeleYemen/Y.Net. We found significant differences between the two. Interestingly, YemenNet, the primary ISP, was found to block very few Web sites. Because these results were contrary to previous information and ONI studies, we repeated the test runs from different locations using different connections but got the same results, which showed that YemenNet no longer filters as extensively as it did in the past. We investigated further and found that the ISP uses a Blue Coat integrated cache/filter appliance to run Websense but possesses a limited number of concurrent user licenses—not nearly enough to cover the 150,000-plus Internet users in the country. Thus, when the number of subscribers accessing the Internet at a given time exceeds the limited number of user licenses, the requests of all users circumvent the filtering software.

The second ISP, TeleYemen/Y.Net, also obtains its filtering software from U.S.-based Websense. However, Y.Net was found to block almost all of the Web sites containing pornography, provocative attire, sex education materials, and anonymizing and privacy tools. Search strings containing the word "sex" are blocked, as are some sites hosting gay and lesbian content, hacking information, and non-erotic nudity. The ISP also filters some religious conversion sites and a limited number of Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and circumvention sites.

The only political Web site found to be blocked by Y.Net is www.soutalgnoub.com, which is run by a Yemeni opposition group. Other than this Web site, neither provider blocked any of the other politically related sites on the testing lists. However, ONI monitored Web access in Yemen during Yemen's September 2006's presidential election and found that the government-owned YemenNet did block access to several independent news and political opposition sites, including Nass Press (nasspress.com), Al-Mostakela Forum (www.mostakela.com), and the Yemeni Council (http://www.al-yemen.org).24

Conclusion

Extensive testing and analysis revealed no evidence that the Yemeni state is currently preventing citizens from accessing news or political content online. The availability of such content should not, however, suggest tolerance for criticism or dissent, as attested by the state’s treatment of journalists and its timely blocking of oppositional media sites during the 2006 presidential elections. The failures of the filtering system installed on Yemen’s principal ISP likewise hint at the state’s limited capacity to control content, rather than any willingness to allow information to flow freely. In essence, the breadth of content filtered should temper any optimism about the evident ineffectiveness of filtering in Yemen witnessed in this round of testing.

NOTES

1. See, for example, Reporters Without Borders, “Yemen press release,” December 14, 2005, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15713 ; Yemen: Annual Report 2006, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=17212.
2. U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: 2005, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61703.htm.
3. International Telecommunication Union, World Telecommunication Indicators 2006.
4. Adnan Hizam, “IT market in Yemen experiences rapid growth,” Yemen Observer, July 29, 2006, http://www.yobserver.com/cgi-bin/2007/exec/view.cgi/22/10622/printer.
5. International Telecommunication Union, World Telecommunication Indicators 2006.
6. YemenNet Web site, Background information, http://www.yemen.net.ye/index.php?q=background (in Arabic).
7. Library of Congress: Federal Research Division, Country Profile: Yemen, December 2006, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/profiles/Yemen.pdf.
8. Helmi Noman, An Overview of the Demographics and Usage Patterns of Internet Users in Developing Countries: Yemeni Internet Population as a Case Study, United Nations Development Programme, http://www.undp.org.ye/ict.php.
9. Ibid.
10. Yemen News Agency (Saba) (Arabic only) http://www.sabanews.net/view.php?scope=f69b5&dr=&ir=&id=103280.
11. Ministry of Telecommunication and Information Technology, http://www.mtit.gov.ye/ (Arabic).
12. AME Info, “Yemen’s Internet market registers high growth rates,” March 14, 2006, http://www.ameinfo.com/80390.html.
13. Terms and conditions for Y.Net Service, http://www.y.net.ye/support/rules.htm.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Yemen News Agency (Saba) Press and Publications Law, Law http://www.sabanews.net/view.php?scope=319c3e9&dr=&ir=&id=44000.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Reporters Without Borders, Yemen: Annual Report 2007, http://www.rsf.org/country-43.php3?id_mot=157&Valider=OK.
21. See Yemen Times, “Journalists reject draft press law,” April 28 to May 1, 2005, http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=837&p=front&a=2 ; IRIN, “Yemen: Journalists still targeted despite draft law,”, April 30, 2006, http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=26327 ; International Press Institute, 2005 World Press Freedom Review, http://www.freemedia.at/cms/ipi/freedom_detail.html?country=/KW0001/KW00....
22. Arab Press Freedom Watch, More Press Freedom Violation Recorded in Yemen, http://www.apfw.org/indexenglish.asp?fname=news%5Cenglish%5C2007%5C01%5C....
See full report at http://www.apfw.org/indexenglish.asp?fname=report%5Cenglish%5C2007%5C01%....
23. Mohammed Al-Qadhi, “Journalists reject draft press law,” Yemen Times, http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=837&p=front&a=2.
24. See the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, “To exit integral competitive presidential elections: The Yemeni government restricts freedom of expression by blocking independent websites,” September 11, 2006, http://www.hrinfo.net/en/reports/2006/pr0911.shtml ; NewsYemen, “Press and freedom of expression: The victims of Yemeni elections,” September 30, 2006, http://www.newsyemen.net/en/view_news.asp?sub_no=4_2006_09_30_6360.

Maktoobblog.com is blocked in Yemen

ONI-MENA — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:53:48 -0400

Several days ago, Internet users in Yemen reported that they could not access maktoobblog.com, a major blog hosting service in the Middle East and North Africa. ONI technical investigation verified that the service has been blocked by Yemennet, Yemen’s government-run ISP. Access is blocked to the entire domain maktoobblog.com, effectively to every blog hosted by the service. Interestingly, users who attempt to access the site receive a network error message instead of the standard blockpage, which is served when users attempt to access sexual content.

This significant blocking is expected to hinder Internet users in Yemen from blogging and reading blogs because maktoobblog.com is home of one of the largest blogging communities in the Middle East and North Africa. Yemen itself has witnessed an increase in the number of local bloggers and blog readers in the past two years. According to a local study, (Arabic) the number of Yemeni blogs reached 2056 by the end of 2007, despite a highly restrictive media environment.

The number of Web sites blocked in Yemen has increased in the past few months to include political opposition as well as independent Web sites and blogs. In response to this increase in Web filtering, Yemenportal.net, a news aggregation site that was blocked in January, organized a campaign to resist filtering and developed tools for Internet users in Yemen to use to circumvent technical censorship measures.

Insurgency against Internet filtering: Yemen's electronic media's reaction to crackdown on Web sites

ONI-MENA — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 18:26:06 -0500

Yemen's major news aggregator and portal calls for "insurgency against Internet filtering" after the government of Yemen blocked the portal and at least 7 other news Web sites. The portal, yemenportal.net, warned in a press release (Arabic) that, unless the government unblocks the news sites, the portal will provide space for banned websites to display their content in full.

ONI confirmed the inaccessibility of several news Web sites from Yemen this month and found out that this new wave of political blocking is not transparent. Users who attempt to access these news Web sites encounter error messages instead of the standard explicit blockage which the filtering regime returns for attempts to access objectionable content such as sex.

A screen shot of the error message returned to users who attempt to visit news Web sites

A screen shot of the error message returned to users who attempt to visit blocked content such as sex sites

Political filtering in Yemen is not new but this new crackdown on news Web sites comes amid political turmoil and social unrest. There have been renewed clashes between the army and religious Shiite groups in the north, and demonstrations organized by former army members in the south who demand political reforms.

The Committee to Protect Journalists interviewed Walid Al-Saqaf, founder of yemenportal.net, and reported that,

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.

Concern about online censorship in Yemen

ONI-MENA — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 12:11:36 -0500

Reporters Without Borders voiced concern today about growing political censorship of the Internet in Yemen after the authorities blocked access to the opposition website www.al-shora.net on 24 February. The site regularly carries articles about corruption, human rights and the need for political and cultural reforms. Several websites and chat forums were temporarily blocked during last September’s presidential elections. Reporters Without Borders

Yemen blocks local newspaper's Web site

ONI-MENA — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 12:05:20 -0500

Al-Shora.net, the Web site of a local Yemeni newspaper has been blocked in Yemen after it published reports critical of the government, the site reported (Arabic). Some local newspapers condemned the blocking and publicized (Nass Press and al-Wahdawi for example) an alternative way (via proxy) to access the banned site from Yemen.

The ONI has previously analyzed the legal and technological restrictions on Internet access in Yemen.

Internet in Yemen: All roads lead backwards (Yemen Times editorial)

nart — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 11:52:58 -0500

In a recent editorial in the Yemen Times, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo) criticized the government-mandated removal of barriers separating users at Internet cafes, calling it a violation of users' privacy rights. According to HRinfo, the new regulation has resulted in a sharp decline in Net cafe use and revenues, which has in turn forced numerous closures, threatening a vital source of connectivity within the country.

Arabic Version of Internet Filtering in Yemen 2004-2005 Released

derek — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 10:40:30 -0400

ONI today released the Arabic translation of its country study on Yemen's Internet filtering system in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format.

ONI Releases Country Study on Yemen

derek — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 22:46:21 -0500

Today, ONI releases the latest in its series of country studies that document Internet filtering by states worldwide. The report on Yemen notes that the state uses filtering technology from an American company, Websense, to control access to Internet content. Yemen's filtering focuses on pornography, proxy servers, gambling sites, and gay / lesbian material. ONI found that filtering by both of Yemen's ISPs increased from 2004 to 2005.