Al-Wahdawi [Archives:2004/759/Press Review]

20 July 2004
Main headlines
– Government incapability of watching the coastal line
– Senior officer and four sheiks of Hajour and Usaimat, killed
– Prisoners tortured in Hodeidah
– Human Rights Minister asks journalists to confine to wailing
Columnist Hamdi al-Bukari writes saying every now and then stress is put on that the evidence of democracy and its embodiment of the Yemeni political regime is the freedom of press represented by critical writings published in opposition newspapers that reached a degree of criticizing the president of the republic.
Yemen is one of the countries where political and media pluralism is associated with reintegration of two parts of two states. Their two regimes were not able to coexist more than three years after which there was the war of the summer of 1994 followed by a bilateral alliance between the partners of the victory. Even the latter alliance did not last long until the unilateral grip returned to practice its war against those differing with it, rightfully or not.
Abbreviating democracy to the presence of opposition press, originally emerging from the constitutional recognition of multi-party system has a big distortion because it intentionally abolishes the economic and social dimensions of democracy.
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