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license was revoked and the newspaper was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 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 governmentowned YemenNet did block access to several
independent news and political opposition sites,
including Nass Press (www.nasspress.com), AlMostakela Forum (www.mostakela.com), and the
Yemeni Council (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
Country Summaries
427
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 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 governmentowned YemenNet did block access to several
independent news and political opposition sites,
including Nass Press (www.nasspress.com), AlMostakela Forum (www.mostakela.com), and the
Yemeni Council (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
Country Summaries
427