Rai [Archives:2004/720/Press Review]

9 March 2004.
Main headlines
– Historical document liable to be blotted out, others heaped under piles of dust
– Al-Thawra newspaper journalists continue their strike
– On hundred Arab poets in Sana'a

Columnist Khalid al-Harwachi says in his article the Yemeni journalists syndicate new council has faced this week a difficult test, even before it could finish distribution of its duties, by the arrest of the council's member the journalist Saeed Thabit by security apparatus and sent to court. That test was enough for the syndicate members to get acquainted with their future role in the protection of rights and freedoms of the journalists. In fact the role played by the syndicate's council in the follow-up of the issue of Saeed Thabit was honourable and positive and the more positive was the big attendance of journalists at the court's yard and its hall in solidarity with their colleagues.
The positive dealing with this matter was not motivated by bias or fanaticism as much as for the application of the law and regulations and non-violation of the journalist and personal rights and freedoms through violating the constitutional stipulations.
The question does not lie only in the arrest of a journalist without any right but rather bigger than that. The syndicate's council is demanded more than anytime before to work for ending the injustice and suppression practiced against journalist professionally and materially inside the journalist establishments whether state-owned or private sector.
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