Source What’s up

From the risk of death to the platforms to defend freedom of expression

Nabil Alosaidi is a Yemeni journalist and member of the Council of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate since 2009. He was chairman of the training and rehabilitation committee and supervisor of the freedoms committee of the union.  He has been living in Switzerland for three years now because of the war in his country. Nabil Alosaidi participates in many events held at the Human Rights Council to convey the voices of the victims and to identify violations of freedom of opinion and expression. Reporters Without Borders has classified Yemen as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists.

The beginnings

“I began my relationship with the press as a hobby. During my high school studies, I began to write for some Yemeni newspapers. Then, I continued to acquire more journalism skills studying at the Media College and the University of Sana’a. I worked for many Yemeni newspapers until I became a correspondent and director of the office of Okaz, a Saudi newspaper, in Yemen.” tells Nabil Alosaidi.

The struggle for professionalism and independence

Nabil Alosaidi says that the difficulties on professional and personal levels do not allow the independent Yemeni press to appear. The political and partisan activities, political disputes and conflicts between power centers interfere with the functioning of the press in Yemen. The independent press is important in the country where people need to hear an independent voice that belongs to them.

“Personally, I have faced these difficulties with courage, like do many Yemeni journalists who dream of a homeland with independent press and freedom of speech. I’m still struggling for it, while the war keeps attacking the press continuously. All the parties of the conflict arrest journalists and prevent the voices of the other. Journalists are facing blackmail, detention, abduction and are assassinated. Now ten of our young journalists are in trial, facing the risk of execution” tells Nabil Alosaidi.

Seeking asylum in Switzerland

Nabil Alosaidi believes that the profession of journalism has always been dangerous in Yemen, especially over the last few years of the war between many parties disputing power. For instance, in September 2014, the Houthi militias swept through Sana’a and overturned the government taking control of its institutions, including the media and the press. They occupied newspapers, radio and television buildings and closed the opposition newspapers.

Nabil Alosaidi describes the story of his survival saying: “I had to move from one city to the next until I reached the city of Taiz, where I stayed hidden with the help of relatives and friends. After a few months, I had to move out of the sieged city before they could discover my place. It was like an impossible task because of the closure of all the exits of Taiz. I walked a long distance until I managed to exit the city and then moved between cities to reach Saudi Arabia. I stayed there for a few months before I could travel to Switzerland. I was part of a media delegation accompanying the negotiations between the Yemeni government and the Houthi militias in Geneva. Because the war did not allow an independent press and forced the journalists to side by one of the parties in the conflict, I decided to stay in Switzerland seeking protection and freedom.”

Nabil Alosaidi believes that staying in Switzerland has greatly influenced his professional career in the press. Here, he started to defend the victims of the human rights violations in Yemen. The protection and the freedom he obtained in Switzerland allows him to deliver the voices of Yemeni journalists to the international community and to the human rights organizations. He is determined to continue defending the freedom of press and journalist detainees in the forums of international press and human rights until the press recovers in Yemen. While in Switzerland, Alosaidi could also lead a press campaign, the most known and the strongest ever, against corruption in the Yemeni government. He has received the Journalism Award for Integrity and Combating Corruption and the Public Anti-Corruption Personality Award in 2018 for this campaign. 

Wafa Al Sagheer

Membre de la rédaction vaudoise de Voix d’Exils

Article traduit de l’anglais vers le français par MHER

Contributeur externe de Voix d’Exils

Version française de l’article ici

Une fillette blessée lors d’un bombardement à Damas le 26.10.2012. Galerie de FreeDomhouse. (CC BY 2.0)

When will this massacre in Syria stop? When will justice finally take place? These questions are essential to answer in the Syrian case as quickly as possible. After more than two years of planned and intentional massacres, every conscious being in the world should feel this real tragedy, and speak up to demand the end of the killing of Syrians now.

In fact, the Syrians are not insects or animals. They are a live nation, and have a great history of prosperity, urbanization and freedom. Naturally, influenced by the butterfly effect of the arabic spring, the Syrian people dared to break the wall of silence, and they went out to ask only for their humanity back, after decades of oppression and humiliation. They demonstrated unarmed for more than one year, accepting all kinds of violence and intimidation peacefully. The right to defend one’s life is what forced them to start pointing their primitive weapons against the regime’s wild troops which were intentionally shooting with the aim to kill, not to intimidate.

History repeats itself often, so I am afraid to reach a point where all of us regret that we did not intervene forcefully to stop this massacre earlier. Look back to early history, and try to remind yourself about all the famous massacres or genocides in the long history of our strange humanity. You will figure out that everything happened due to ignorance and lack of interest or action. Then, what was the conclusion!? It was literally a disaster, a real one! So do we have to reach in Syria the level of Holocaust or the Rwandese genocide to drag the international community’s attention to act? Usually, they offer us the warm speeches and the nice words about the sympathy and the humanitarian help, but it is not enough at all. It needs a strong will and decisive intervention to solve it now. To be honest, I will be always confused and astonished by the different standards that people apply all over world!

The course of events in Syria, and since the beginning of the revolution in particular, has declined, although the situation has not reached the bottom yet. So it is not hard to understand that the events in Syria are expected to get worse, and the whole country is exposed to more destruction. This is highly dangerous, and will lead to a series of painful results in the coming future. Those results will affect the human being who is the most important element in this complicated equation, and will destroy the country’s normal structure, which will make it a real struggle for Syrian society to get back soon to normality after the end of these miserable circumstances. Furthermore, the surrounding region will be badly affected for sure. The area is complex and entangled in a lot of issues: ethnic origins, religions, economy…etc. Also, we have to take into consideration the number of the refugees who fled out to the surrounding countries, and their effect demographically and economically on these countries with time.

In the Syrian case, the international community doesn’t deal with a variation in the viewpoints between the two parties. The story is even more complicated. There is a regime that kills its people, and on the other hand, there are rebellious people seeking freedom and dignity. There is a system that uses all its forces, which were supposed to be at the Syrian’s service, to smash the unarmed people who are still begging for help from the international community, and actually what has been done yet remains minor. Unfortunately, we all know the dark side of history, when the international community neglected many massacres under many pretexts and then was forced to interfere, but it was always so late. This is what it seems will happen in the tragedy in Syria too. What a pity!

Orwa Al-Hussein

Member de la redaction valaisanne de Voix d’Exils