‘Yemen ignores rights in fighting insurgents’

SANA’A - Yemeni authorities have “sacrificed” human rights and committed unlawful killings of people linked to Al Qaeda and local insurgents as the Arab country tried to confront threats from those groups, Amnesty International said Wednesday.

In a report titled “Cracking Down Under Pressure”, the international rights watchdog called on Yemeni authorities to “stop sacrificing human rights in the name of security” as they fight Al Qaeda, Shiite rebels and southern separatists.

The report documented rights violations, mainly unlawful killings, arbitrary arrests, torture and unfair trials for suspected Al Qaeda members and activists of the separatist Southern Movement, which is calling for the south of Yemen to secede from the north.

Amnesty said that journalists, dissenters, human-rights defenders and critics of the government have been been targeted for arbitrary detention, unfair trials and beatings.

The victims of those alleged violations included supporters of the Shiite rebels, known as Houthis after the family of their leaders, who fought government forces for more than five years in north-western Yemen.

“The Yemeni authorities, under pressure from the USA and others to fight Al Qaeda, and Saudi Arabia to deal with the Houthis, have been citing national security as a pretext to deal with opposition and stifle all criticism,” said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International’s director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“All measures taken in the name of countering terrorism or other security challenges in Yemen must have at its heart the protection of human rights,” Smart was quoted as saying by the report.

The number of death sentences passed in trials of people accused of having links to Al Qaeda, or to the Houthi group “has noticeably increased,” Amnesty International said in its report. It said security forces have killed at least 113 people since 2009 in operations the government says target terrorists.

“Attacks have become more frequent since December 2009 with security forces in some cases making no attempt to detain suspects before killing them,” the report said.

In a Dec 17 missile attack on a suspected Al Qaeda hideout in the southern province of Abyan, at least 41 people including 21 children and 14 women were killed, it said.

“The Yemeni authorities have a duty to ensure public safety and to bring to justice those engaged in attacks that deliberately target members of the public, but when doing so they must abide by international law,” Smart said.

“Enforced disappearances, torture and other ill-treatment and extrajudicial executions are never permissible, and the Yemeni authorities must immediately cease these violations.”