How Yemen deals with pesky reporters

GlobalPost
Updated on
The World

NEW YORK — Until this month, I had reported from Yemen for eleven months without bothering the authorities. Now, I am told, if I try to return, I will be arrested at the Sanaa Airport.

Before I left Yemen, one editor asked me, “Would you even want to go back?” In the West, Yemen is more famous for being a terrorist hotbed than for its medieval gingerbread cities, sleepy villages and mobs of children shouting “Hello!” and “Welcome!” to every foreigner that passes. Almost everyone who goes to Yemen eventually wants to go back.

Yemen is also known for quietly controlling information by detaining reporters, confiscating equipment, blocking opposition websites and refusing access to much of the countryside. Freelance photographer Adam Reynolds and I were technically detained and later deported for traveling without a permit.

Why? We had traveled to a place that many locals call, “Al-Janoob al-Harr,” the Free South, because the government cannot go there. A network of sheiks and a growing separatist group dubbed the Southern Movement governs the area. Rocks and concrete walls across the region are painted blue, black and red, in the form of the illegal flag of the former South Yemen, which was a separate country until 1990.

Yemen is fraught with security crises — including Al Qaeda and a on-and-off northern rebellion — but many say the biggest threat to the central government is the Southern Movement. North and south united peacefully 20 years ago. Four years later, a southern rebellion was crushed in a brief yet bloody civil war. Separatist sentiment has grown in recent years, sparking widespread protests and sporadic violence.

Adam and I traveled to a remote mountainous area called Yaffa to meet Southern Movement leaders. To get past the military checkpoints, we disguised ourselves as Yemeni women, covering our faces and eyes with black veils.

After a day and half in the rocky rebel stronghold, we returned to the steamy port city of Aden, in government-controlled territory, and checked into a hotel. Around midnight, the receptionist called my room, and said the boss needed to see our passports immediately.

Our documents where whisked away to the police station. A man from the visa office appeared in the hotel lobby where I sat, hoping the passports, and the man would return. He knew we had been in Yaffa because a government informant reported us. But don’t worry, he said, it would be sorted out with paperwork in the morning.

By noon the next day, we were in an office in the dank political security complex across town being questioned. We were not there to fill in paperwork.

Hours — and many vague answers — later, I was frazzled. Investigators wanted to know who we spoke to and where we went. Many of the separatists had asked not to be named for their safety. Because I am a freelancer, no editor is responsible for me. “When freelancers go to prison,” I wondered, “do their newspapers try to get them out?”

Around midnight, we were told we were going to a “hotel.” The chief barked orders at officers, telling them to take away our bags, phones and equipment. He said we could go to the hotel adjacent to the prison, or we could go to the prison.

For the next two days, guards, stationed outside my hotel room door, knocked every couple of hours to see if I wanted anything. Food? Water? Pepsi?

Adam didn’t fare as well. He spent he second night in a dirty, hot jail cell, apparently for a lark. The guards later teased him. “How did you like the night in jail?” one asked, chuckling. Adam later told me that the low point of his night was watching another prisoner be led away in a black hood.

On the fourth day, around 7 a.m., a guard banged on my door. I opened it and he looked delighted. “You are going to Sanaa,” he said smiling. I asked to call the U.S. Embassy, and when the question was one again ignored I knew we were not going to our homes in Sanaa’s Old City. I packed my items in a plastic baggy: toothbrush, toothpaste and a green shirt. My other stuff was still in custody.

A few hours later Adam and I were sandwiched between two guards in the back seat of a four-wheel-drive, as we headed for the Sanaa Political Security Office. We were separated at the PSO, and in an empty stone room, I questioned again. I gave officers the passwords to all of my email accounts.

Just as our stuff was being re-confiscated by the Sanaa PSO, we heard an American voice. A tall blond man from the U.S. Embassy shook hands with one of the Yemeni officers, and thanked him. “Are you guys OK?” he asked quietly. A few minutes later, we were in an armored embassy vehicle, on our way to the Old City.

The blond man told us that we had a few days to leave Yemen, and we should never come back. He would try to recover our equipment.

It was drizzling when we rumbled up the cobblestone alleyway into Felahi, a cozy square near our apartments, filled with juice-stalls, and chatty shopkeepers. Bare-footed children kicked around a soccer ball in the rain. Men in white robes who typically pass the time talking in the square moved under awnings. Worlds away from political security, it looked a painting inside a dusty collection of fairytales.

No one could ever go there and not wish to one day go back.

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