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Eurasia Review
April 6, 2012
Yemen’s transition to a democracy
that respects human rights and the rule of law is at risk unless the new government
moves swiftly on security reform and accountability for past crimes, Human
Rights Watch said today.
The transition government of
President Abd Rabu Mansur Hadi also should ensure that security forces on all
sides release unlawfully detained prisoners and decommission child soldiers,
Human Rights Watch said. The government should repeal provisions of an array of
laws that restrict free expression, association, and assembly, and that
discriminate or fail to protect women and girls. Human Rights Watch met in
Sanaa with Yemeni government officials, political party leaders, and civil
society members during a trip to Yemen from March 15 to April 3, 2012.
“While Yemen’s new government has taken
several promising steps, the repressive security apparatus of former President
Ali Abdullah Saleh remains largely intact,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle
East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Civilian leaders
reiterated that they cannot move forward on accountability and reform of the
security services so long as Saleh continues to play a hand in directing
various security forces there.”
The Human Rights Watch delegation,
led by Whitson, met with members of the Yemeni cabinet and judiciary, including
Prime Minister Mohammed Salim Basindwa; Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi;
Interior Minister Abdul-Qader Qahtan; Human Rights Minister Huryah Mashhoor;
Legal Affairs Minister Mohammed Ahmed al-Mikhlafi; the Supreme Judicial Council
chairman, Esam Abdulwahab al-Samawi; Justice Minister Murshed Ali al-Arashani;
and Prosecutor General Ali Ahmed al-Awash.
The delegation also met with
intelligence and security chiefs, including Ali Mohamed al-Anisi, chairman of
the National Security Bureau; Gen. Ahmed Ali Saleh, commander of the Republican
Guard; Brig.-Gen. Yayha Saleh, chief of Central Security Forces; and Gen. Ali
Mohsen al-Ahmar, commander of the First Armored Division, which defected to the
political opposition in March 2011. It also met with Hamid al-Ahmar, the head
of a powerful clan whose fighters clashed with Saleh’s forces during the
uprising.
Hadi, who was inaugurated in
February after a yearlong uprising against Saleh, and the caretaker cabinet
that took office in December have made progress in a number of areas, Human
Rights Watch said. Positive steps include partially demilitarizing major cities
and making a small number of leadership changes within the security units and
the Supreme Judiciary Council, Yemen’s top judicial authority. The government
also has pledged to draft a new constitution, commence a national dialogue, and
reform electoral laws in advance of parliamentary elections in 2014.
The government is drafting a
transitional justice law that would empower a truth commission to investigate
past violations, including deadly attacks on largely peaceful protesters by
government forces and gangs in 2011, and compensate victims. In addition, it is
working on measures to increase participation of women in public life and has
permitted the United Nations Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights
(OHCHR) to open an office in Yemen.
However, Human Rights Watch found
that Sanaa and other cities remain divided into zones controlled by an array of
military, paramilitary, and tribal forces, and that Hadi’s efforts to
reorganize them under a central command have stalled. Moreover, with few
exceptions, the leadership and membership of these units remain unchanged,
despite documentation by Human Rights Watch and other human rights groups of
serious violations by their forces, including the Central Security Services,
the Republican Guard, and the Political Security and National Security agencies
during the 2011 uprising and in previous years.
In addition, the country has yet
to complete any investigations into the abuses committed by these forces,
including their role in attacks on peaceful protests that killed at least 270
demonstrators and bystanders, the excessive use of force to police
demonstrations, and indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas, and to hold
those responsible to account.
Saleh’s relatives and other
loyalists of the former president head security forces including the Republican
Guard and Central Security, and the civilian leadership in the country has
stated that it has no control over these forces.
The US Pentagon has stated that it
plans to spend $75 million this year in military training and donations of
equipment to Yemen to fight al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and affiliated
armed Islamist groups, provided the new government shows sufficient progress
toward reform. The US suspended $150 million in such assistance during the
uprising last year. In the past, US security assistance has gone to individual
units of the Yemeni security services, including the Yemeni Air Force and
Central Security’s Counterterrorism Unit.
Human Rights Watch called for the
United States and other donors to ensure that they do not provide military aid
to individual units of the security services that have been implicated in
serious abuses and where there have been no clear steps to ensure
accountability for these abuses.
