ABDULAZIZ: Making Yemen a Good World Citizen

Mr. President, let me say that as editor of the Yemen Times, I cannot turn it into a carbon copy of the official newspapers. However, if issuing the Yemen Times will cost me my life, as the threats indicate, I do not want to continue with it. This matter is in your hands! Abdulaziz Al-Saqqaf, 2 January 1999.

Yemen in the 1990s is the story of how two authoritarian regimes merged to make a democracy! This was new territory for all and a pioneering experiment in a region known to constrain human rights. Dr Abdulaziz Al-[CE1] Saqqaf saw that democracy could indeed take root in Yemen, and established Yemen Times newspaper to play a significant role to make this experiment a successful one.

This memoir recounts the story of Dr Abdulaziz Al-Saqqaf, an economics professor turned journalist, and his relentless pursuit of human rights and freedom of expression despite the gravest challenges. Abdulaziz dubbed the mission of Yemen Times to make Yemen a good world citizen, a bridge between Yemen and the free world. He went above and beyond to realize this mission, testing and challenging the authoritarian tendencies of those in charge and establishing one precedent after another to accelerate the maturity of Yemen’s democracy, often successfully.

Abdulaziz’s story is one of perseverance and ambition, turning personal loss into devotion and State prosecution into tenacity in service of human rights in the most unlikely place on earth: Yemen.