September net

Journalists who survived the killing and arrest of Houthis over the past four years are planning to resume their job in Taiz, the government-retaken city in central Yemen.

In cooperation with the International Federation of Journalists, scores of male and female journalists convened to discuss revitalizing the role of the local Union of Yemeni Journalists that has been frozen over the past four years until the government forces pushed the armed rebels to the city’s peripheries.

Addressing the meeting, Emad al-Saqqaf, the financial manager of the Union said this meeting is meant to “bringing the journalists together again, taking stock of the violations they have gone through since the start of the war [March 2015],” he said.

“Violations took the form of killing, abduction, suspension of salaries, dismissals from job and forcing journalists to vagabond.”

Addressing the impact of the war, member of the Union, Mohammed AbduSufyan, said “a number of journalists were killed, forced to flee and disappeared by abductions.” He said that media institutions including newspapers were subjected to destruction, looting and closure.”

Although the government controls its downtown, Taiz is still under siege and constant heavy shelling by the Iran-backed rebels who invaded it as part of the 2014 coup and 2015 bloody incursions that triggered the current war.