APFW condemns threats against YJS chairman [Archives:2004/753/Local News]

Arab Press Freedom Watch in a statement issued on Tuesday June 29 a strong denunciation of the threatening phone call received by Mr. Mahboob Ali, President of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate and Vice President of the Arab Journalists Syndicate. The unknown caller threatened Mr. Ali with 'physical elimination'.
The organization referred to the threat as one of a number of desperate attempts and cowardly acts aimed at pressuring descent journalists to suspend their support for freedom issues and the transition to democracy in Yemen and other Arab countries. The organization considered the recent threat against the president of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate as a serious signal of the deterioration of political dialogue.
Only desperate individuals or authorities resort to the use of threats, aggression and intimidation to compensate for their inability to confront an opinion by an opinion and an argument by an argument. This state of desperation is definitely the consequence of decades of limitations and restrictions on public freedoms, the right to dialogue and the acceptance of differences of opinions.
Arab Press Freedom Watch calls on the Yemeni authorities to take such a threat and other desperate acts very seriously and to take expeditious and appropriate measures to protect leaders, activists, advocates of public opinion and independent opinion-formers so that they do not become victims of tyranny and injustice. It also calls on civic society leaders and all Yemeni journalists to unite with each other to confront, deter and prevent such threats, which seek to create divisions in society and to drag Yemeni society into a circle of violence and revenge. The virtues and values of forgiveness, freedom, dialogue and the right to differ must replace negative and unproductive approaches in Yemeni society.
Arab Press Freedom Watch strongly declares its full solidarity with the president of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate who is playing a vital role at the Yemeni, Arab and international levels. We appeal to those who have threatened him to reconsider their approach to violence, threats and intimidation and instead to resort other more civilized means to settle differences. It is a shame that some still embrace such mentalities in the twenty-first century.
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