Just one day before the end of the most violating year of 2021, on December 30, Hala Badawi, 28-year-old female journalist has been attacked while returning from a meeting with the Staff of the Second Military Region in the city of Mukalla, the capital of Hadhramaut Governorate, eastern Yemen.
Hala found herself surrounded by some soldiers of the General Intelligence Service. They rushed into her car and drove her to Military Intelligence, where she was detained without charges. On January 3, she was transferred to the Central Prison in the governorate. Her family was allowed to visit her only once, according to her sister, Hind. At midnight on January 5, her house was broken into under an order from the Criminal Prosecution, and all the mobile phones of her parents, sister and husband were taken after a house search.
Hala was known for her opposition to the measures implemented by the local authority and government agencies in Hadhramaut, and for expressing her opposing opinions on some practices on her social media pages.
"There are no logical reasons for 12 accusations against Hala, which were not presented as a list, or in a case file. This is what we have not found, or been provided to us, until today,” said Safaa Bakouneh, Hala's lawyer.
Mukalla State Radio had broadcast the charges against journalist Badawi, including communicating with a foreign country, and working with a terrorist cell by passing mines and explosive devices in her car. The security services relied on examining her mobile phone to come up with a list of charges, which she was not formally charged with until writing this story.
Black page
What is happening to Hala is among 86 violations of media freedom in Yemen during the past year, according to the Media Freedoms Observatory. The Observatory reported 4 killing cases, 6 cases of injury, 18 cases of arrest, 9 cases of attack, 13 cases of threat, 15 cases of trial and interrogation by prosecutors and police stations, 12 cases of displacement, 5 cases of storming, looting and suspension of media institutions, and 4 cases were divided between housebreaking, looting, incitement and arbitrary dismissal.
In its annual report, the Observatory stressed that " 2021 was worse than the last year, as attackers have used terrorist acts against journalists in Yemen. They have not only snipped and directly stricken journalists, but they planted explosives under journalists' cars, as happened to journalist Mahmoud al-Otmi and his pregnant wife Rasha Al-Harazi, who promptly died with her unborn after blasting her car on their way to deliver the birth. Her husband was seriously injured and taken to the hospital in a bad condition, on November 9, 2021.
A lot of Risks
The difficult media environment in which Yemeni male and female journalists work during their coverage of the seven-year conflict is confirmed by specialized international organizations. Reporters Without Borders ranks Yemen on the blacklist of media freedom, which is ranked 169th globally in 2021, down two places from 2020, and no worse in Arab world except Saudi Arabia and Syria, Reporters Without Borders commented on what Yemeni journalists are experiencing by saying: “No matter what region they are in, journalists are subject to surveillance and can be arrested for simply posting a post on social media platforms, and even when they change their career to avoid persecution, they remain vulnerable for prosecutions because of their previous writings.
A member of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate Council, Nabil Al-Asadi calls the years of war as the riskiest since Yemen knew the media and freedom of expression. “The systematic violations by the parties to the conflict destroy journalism. The Yemeni journalists have been subjected to all conceivable violations, which destroyed and swept the journalism away in the country," said Al-Asadi.
Physical and digital violation
The physical suffering is not limited to the familiar risks of movement and difficult environment, as in the usual situation, but what was produced by the war is beyond expectations. Journalists and media workers are a main target of the parties to the conflict during their field coverage of the military confrontations and the resulting violations against civilians. As a result, 50 Yemeni journalists have been killed since the outbreak of the war in 2015. During the same period, the Media Freedoms Observatory documented 2,369 violations against journalists. The violations varied between cases of arrests by the internationally recognized government, and cases of abduction by parties outside the framework of the government, in addition to displacements, threats, attacks, suspensions from work, prosecution and trial, layoffs, and other violations that affected media institutions.
A survey of 104 male and female journalists working in 16 Yemeni governorates, 59.6% of them males and 40.4% females, concluded that 65.4% follow occupational safety measures before starting any task, while 34.6% do not follow any measure to ensure their safety when covering the conflict in the country.
The survey – which was carried out by the writer of this article – indicated that 43.2% work for media outlets, of whom 77.8% are not equipped by their employer with physical and digital safety tools. These results show a large gap between what is advocated for the safety of journalists by some media outlets and what is implemented during field tasks for its correspondents and collaborators.
The survey also found that 59.6% of journalists received at least one training course on occupational and digital safety, 75.8% of them work for independent media, 14.5% work for government media, 9.7% work for partisan media, while 40.4% of journalists have not received any training, throughout their work in covering the seven-year conflict.
Unprotected Journalists
About physical and digital safety tools, 86.6% answered that they have not got the tools of physical safety and digital security from the media outlets they work for during their field coverage of the conflict. This confirms how much the media work is underestimated during the disorders in the country.
16.7% of them work for regional and international media outlets and have not been equipped with physical and digital safety tools by their employers. The same ruling and case applies to 23.3% of those surveyed and work in a local area within the Yemeni governorates, in addition to 60% of those who work for media outlets countrywide.
The violations and risks against Yemeni journalists varied according to the nature of the conflict and the multiplicity of its parties in different areas of control. Verbal abuse topped these violations, which hit 30.8 % of journalists, 16.3% were threatened with killing, 13.4% were injured while performing their field tasks, while 12.5% were not subjected to any risk or violation, 27% were subjected to physical attack, arbitrary arrest, attempted abduction, and received threatening messages and attempts to hack their accounts on social media, in addition to tracking and surveillance.
Journalists' accounts, by the nature of their work, are vulnerable to hacking, because they possess important information, whether on victims or violations by the parties to the conflict. Additionally, journalists are subjected to blackmail and defamation, which find war a fertile environment. These are the most important digital risks identified by the digital specialist Fahmy Al-Baheth. "Acquiring digital and technical skills, working on a security plan based on an assessment of risks according to the nature of the work and the place of the mission, and the ability to contain the situation and quickly deal with what the journalist may encounter at checkpoints or during field coverage, are important and Yemeni journalists should be aware of them before starting any task," Fahmy added.
Media expert and trainer in occupational safety Yassin Al-Zakri diagnosed the situation by saying: "Hundreds of journalists have received training on physical safety while covering the conflict, but their commitment is limited, because the parties they work for do not pay attention to this, do not provide the minimum safety tools for them. The tools prices are unreasonable, so the journalist can't buy it for the low payment he gets."
Psychological and Legal Impacts
Physical and digital risks are tangible and can be resolved and preventive measures are taken, even first and foremost. However, the media work in the current Yemeni conditions has generated dire psychological impacts. Many people are living under the impact of their human stories, as if they are being jailed in them.
The are other impacts, such as those lived by journalist Saddam al-Madani while his covering the military battles in the Marib governorate, northern Yemen. He is bombarded with family calls to stop him doing media jobs. "I live under terrible psychological pressure as a result of daily witnessing of the conflict and its victims, and the pressure of my family who are under continuous anxiety, because of my work. There are countless threats and insults, which I receive on social media pages.” Saddam said. “I no longer fear for myself if something bad happens to me, most of my worries and thinking is on my parents (who are over 75 years old). They receive threats and messages to stop me doing what I do, and these pressures affect their psychological and physical condition,” Saddam added.
In Sana'a, where the Houthi militia "Ansar Allah'' takes control, Essam has chosen a fictitious name to publish his press materials since 2015. " You are under censorship, because you are a journalist. I had to keep hiding with constant psychological pressure, because my situation would be difficult if my name was revealed. This fears me and it is the reason for my serious thinking to leave my media career. They will not hesitate to prosecute me on charges of treason and espionage for another state," Essam said.
As for female journalist Rania Abdullah, she expresses what she faces and what her colleagues face at work. She considers that media work in Yemen is not encouraging. "We don’t have work contracts regulating the obligations and rights between the journalist and the institution he works or cooperates with. There is no health insurance, or psychological support programs, even the pay is not up to the tasks we do," she said.
"By its nature, media work has a lot of psychological pressure, not to mention it is in a conflict environment. The impacts differ from one journalist to another, according to the circumstances in which he lives. There are journalists who suffer from anxiety, others suffer from trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. This happens in the case of continuous coverage of conflict victims," the psychologist Mona Al-Dhahabani said when asked about the psychological impacts of covering the conflict. “Journalists need training courses before covering the conflict, such as self-care, and how to deal with psychological disorders that they will face during their work, so that they do not hurt themselves as a result of volatile situations they undergo from time to time,” she added.
Yemen is among the most dangerous working environments for journalists in the world. The country has been going through a war that has left 377,000 dead until the end of 2021, according to a report issued by the United Nations Development Program. Nearly 21 million people, or more than 66% of the total population, need humanitarian assistance in light of the worst crisis in the world, according to the classification of the United Nations.
