Crap! I Have a Blog!

I had my first article published in the Yemeni newspaper I’m working for here [www.yobserver.com ]. It’s up on the website here and it’s in the print version. It’s not actually journalism though; I didn’t do any interviews for it. All I did was write what was happening on the internet outside of Yemen. It’s more of a summary of what other people had written with additional background on human rights and Yemen, that I thought was important for Yemenis to understand - since this story is being viewed here, somewhat, as an example of outsiders, (do-gooders), interfering in Yemen’s internal affairs. But my editor, while uncomfortable in some ways about the story, apparently liked it overall and wanted it in - with minor edits.

So here’s how the article came about: My job is to edit the paper - articles are submitted to me from the Yemeni journalists, and I edit them for language and structure before they’re printed. On, I think, the 30th of last month we got a story about this case. We, the other editor, Jon and I, read it and thought it was an important story - hopefully for reasons obvious in the story I wrote - and it should go on the front page. So we asked the lady journalist who submitted it to us, why it’s in the Culture section. She said she didn’t know and asked why we thought it shouldn’t be. We made our points and she went off to ask the managing editor if it could go on the front page. She came back 47 seconds later and said words to the effect of "no dice." Jon and I struggled with this point - do we fight for the story? Would we be willing to walk away from the paper if we lost? Yes - we get paid a bowl of beans and hummus a month for our work. So we sat around talking about going to the editor for the next couple hours without actually doing it. Later, we heard it was going on the front page. We were heroes. But the story, and our interest in it, were becoming a source of office talk and journalists were coming to us wanting to know what the big deal was. We made our point - that this is going to be a major international human rights case centered in Yemen; that Yemen stands to suffer a serious setback in its reputation as a human rights reformer; it was going to set back Yemen’s progress in the rule of law; and THE GIRL WAS JUST A CHILD, FOR ALLAH’S SAKE! AND SHE’S BEEN GETTING SHAT ON FOR HER ENTIRE LIFE! It was really disturbing to us that those last points just didn’t seem to be registering with the crowd of journalists. One even pulled a quote off the top of his head of some justice ministry person stating that the girl was 18 all along and don’t worry about it. Trust us - in effect. I have no idea if the quote was real or not. We also said that the execution was supposed to happen in a month - it was actually three days away.

So the paper comes out a couple days later. It’s buried. It’s in there, at least, but it’s buried.

I decide to spend my free time researching the story - googling it. First night I turn up nothing except an alert put out by an Italian human rights group that I think was translated from Italian to English by babblefish.com or some other program. Oddly enough it was pretty much word-for-word the same story that was originally submitted to us as a story. Not uncommon here, I’m finding. Next day I find more - the Amnesty reports and the Reuters piece, and eventually the rest of my sources for the article.

I’m not a journalist for the paper, but, when I was hired, I was more or less encouraged to write stuff, on my own time, and submit it for the paper - sort of in lieu of pay, we’ll publish your crap. Fair enough. It’s the main reason I took the job; that most of us take the job. So now I’m toying with the idea of writing something on the story, but without any real journalism - talking to people here - because I don’t know what kind of things are going to get me in trouble here. So I gather what other people are doing and do some background research - googling - and write this piece.

Before this week’s edition comes out, (and I have to rewrite the piece because I had written it assuming the execution would not be stayed), I submit the piece to my managing editor. And we talk about it. I think he views me as imposing western values on Yemeni society without understanding the culture, the religion, or the problems that the government has to deal with that are bigger than just one girl. He expresses some opinions that fly in the face of what we, westerners, think of as "international human rights," some of which disturbed me quite a bit. But at the same time, he was pleased to print it, and with only minor changes - basically I made two assertions that he wanted me to attribute to another source, (the story of the 13 year-old in 1993, and that Amina had been impregnated by a guard at the women’s prison - a pretty safe assertion, I thought, but OK). He made his point about attributing everything we say with a story about the previous day’s visit we received from the "political security" police regarding some other western journalists that recently left the paper, (and one of them, the country). That’s a long story, but nevertheless was an effective example of the paper needing to cover its ass - even when the publisher is a personal friend of the president’s.

So I made the changes and the story ran yesterday, (it’s not online yet, but I expect it will eventually).

There’s a lot of "cultural" and other resistance, I think, to Yemenis supporting this girl. It’s a positive thing that the president made the right decision. But I’m learning that this place is a morass of raw political power, old-school traditions and values that I have yet to be able to even wrap my mind around. I’m getting an idea of how the two - power and traditions/religion - interact with each other, and I plan on sitting down with my editor to discuss them before I do any more writing or doing interviews. I think he would prefer to do that as well. I’m being really cautious, and trying not to let this distract me from my primary purpose for coming here - learning Arabic - but, at the same time, this is fucking interesting. It’s a little exciting, (bear in mind that I don’t fear anything happening to me physically, but I do fear getting Yemenis in trouble, which I’m being careful about), and I’m learning alot about how these countries work, I think. I expect that I will do follow-up on this story - complete with interviewing the lawyer and government people - and that my editor will support me and guide me along the process, even though I think he’d personally rather I dropped it altogether.

More to come, maybe…

Also, If anyone’s interested, I’ve put up about 75 new photos – new and old - on my blog recently. The link should appear at the bottom of this email.

Amina and Yemen get a second chance

By your’s truly

For the Yemen Observer

The Yemen Ministry of Justice nearly violated international laws and the Yemen Penal Code when it attempted to carry out the execution of a woman who was reportedly 14 years-old at the time the crime she was convicted of was committed. The execution of Amina Ali Abduladif was temporarily stayed by President Ali Abdullah Saleh after international appeals by Amnesty International, its members from around the world and European officials. Her story had been carried by press in the United Kingdom and New Zealand and by Reuters, and Amnesty International’s urgent response network during the week leading up to the scheduled execution. They have also raised serious questions about the legal proceedings that convicted and sentenced Amina, and assert the possibility that Amina was innocent.

According to an Amnesty International news release published on April 28, Amina was possibly as young as 14 and pregnant with her second child when her husband was murdered in January 1998 in her home town of Mahweet. Yemen law requires that a girl be at least 15 to marry but the U.S. State Department’s annual human rights report claims that the law is not enforced by authorities. Amina was likely 12 or 13 years-old when she was married and pregnant with her first child.

Amina was convicted of the murder of her husband, Hizam Hassan Miqa’el. According to an April 30 story by Daniel McGrory of Britain’s TimesOnline, "witnesses say her husband was killed by his cousin in a land dispute… but their evidence was not presented to the court during Mrs Abduladif’s trial in May 1999." He also reports that no forensic or other evidence was submitted by the prosecution at the trial. According to Amnesty’s alerts as well as McGrory’s reporting, Amina’s conviction was based solely on a confession that she was reportedly tortured into giving, and that she had since maintained her innocence. She was sentenced to death on May 24, 1999.

Amnesty has reported that Amina had been denied access to her two daughters, the youngest of which was recently killed in a car accident.

In July 2001 the court of appeals upheld the death sentence for Amina without considering her age, according to Amnesty. The sentence was then upheld by the Supreme Court in July of 2002 and ratified soon after by President Saleh.

In 1994 Yemen amended its Penal Code to exclude the death penalty for people convicted of crimes committed when they were under 18. This change followed a case in which 13 year-old Nasser Munir Nasser al-Kirbi was publicly hanged in Sana’a along with three adult men on July 21, 1993, after being convicted of murder and highway robbery, according to an Amnesti International Juvenile Death Penalty project. Al-Kirbi is the youngest person known to be executed in the world since 1990.

But al-Kirbi is Yemen’s only known juvenile execution since 1990. Since 1990 there were 38 juvenile executions recorded by Amnesty, (half of them in the United States). In multiple reports on child executions since 1994 Yemen was noted more prominently for its apparent change of heart, (its 1994 Penal Code reform), than for its record youngest execution. Had Amina been executed as planned Yemen could have expected to be known for its revival of the practice despite its technical ban. If Yemen eventually executes her and she proves to have been a juvenile, the country would be re-joining the short list of five countries that are known to have executed child offenders since 2000: China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Pakistan, and the United States.

Along with violating its own laws, Yemen would also be violating several international treaties that is has bound itself to uphold:

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has been signed and ratified by more than 152 countries, including Yemen, specifically prohibits the use of the death sentence "for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age."

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, signed and ratified by every country except the United States and Somalia, states: "Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age."

The Geneva Conventions of 1949, and two additional protocols of 1977, specifically outlaw the practice of executing child offenders. In 1984 the UN General Assembly adopted, by voice vote, the Safeguards Guaranteeing the Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty, which specifically prohibits the practice.

Like most countries of the world today, Amnesty International takes an abolitionist stance against the death penalty in all cases. But the prohibition of its use for child offenders is especially condemned around the world for reasons perhaps best expressed by Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights:

"The overwhelming international consensus that the death penalty should not apply to juvenile offenders stems from the recognition that young persons, because of their immaturity, may not fully comprehend the consequences of their actions and should therefore benefit from less severe sanctions than adults. More importantly, it reflects the firm belief that young persons are more susceptible to change, and thus have a greater potential for rehabilitation than adults."

This of course is in addition to the reasons most countries no longer apply the death penalty at all, especially the fact that judicial proceedings are necessarily conducted by human beings and thus are capable of being severely flawed.

Amina was previously scheduled to be executed in 2002. Just before the sentence was carried out it was discovered that she had become. She alleged that she had been raped pregnant by one of the guards at al-Mahweet prison but refused to identify her attacker for fear of retribution. No investigation or punishment of individuals at the prison appears to have taken place. Amina was given a stay of execution through the period of breastfeeding the child, which ended this year. According to her lawyer, Shada Nasir, Amina’s family refuses to care for her new son due to their shame that she brought on by being raped.

On May 3, one day after the scheduled execution, Amnesty reported that it had been stayed by the president and that a "special committee" had been appointed by the Attorney General to investigate the details of the case, including evidence of Amina’s age at the time of the murder. The president will then decide whether to commute or approve the death sentence based on the Attorney General’s recommendations.

They also reported that the situation of another man convicted of the murder and sentenced to death, Ali Said Qaba’il, is unknown at this time.

President Saleh is reported to have been "moved" by Amina’s story and has inquired as to how Yemen’s court system could have sentenced a juvenile to death in contravention to Yemeni law.

In a follow-up story in the TimesOnline, McGrory quoted Amina’s attorney, "She is very grateful for those abroad who protested about her case. We believe it was this international intervention that saved her, as here she had been forgotten."