‘No one can stifle Yemenis’ voice’

Press TV has conducted an interview with Ibrahim Moussawi, political commentator in Beirut, about Egyptian satellite company Nilesat taking off the air Yemen’s Arabic broadcaster, al-Massirah.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Mr. Mousawi, how do you feel about this? Certainly it seems like an attempt to control the narrative and the view the people have?

Moussawi: Well, certainly this is something that should be condemned by all words. This is not something that could be accepted in a free world. This is not something that could be accepted when we talk about journalism, when we talk about the right of the people to access to the right information in the right time.

When you talk about al-Massirah, it has been doing its job in revealing the atrocities and the massacres that are being perpetrated by the Saudi forces and by the so-called coalition forces and this is not something that could be accepted at all, just like what you mentioned when you talked about the ISIL and the other Takfiri groups.

They are being given the air and the space in order to broadcast the horrific images of their perpetrations, of their atrocities, of their massacres to tarnish the image of Islam, to get a wrong idea about Islam. Moreover, the kind of massacres, the kind of destructions that the Saudis are doing in Yemen, is trying more or less to alleviate in the mind of the people what the Israelis have done because this has more access and this has exceeded what has been done in other places.

So this is something that should be understood as part of the attack against the Yemeni people in the first place and on the other hand they should know that this is not going to silence the people for revealing what is happening to them. I believe more and more social media is joining now on this, trying to shed the light over the kind of aggression that is being led now against Yemen.

Press TV: Exactly. That leads me to my second question Mr. Moussawi. Do you think that anyone who’ll be successful in trying to block the news of the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, as you have said of course in social media there are many other ways to get the message out?

Moussawi: Absolutely. No one can do that. No one can silence the message to go out actually because more and more people now when you talk about social media, when you talk about the multimedia, you are talking about a huge network, you are talking about volunteers, you are talking about websites, you are talking about people who are in thousands all over the world and trying to send the message.

I believe more and more awareness is taking place now in different ranks and that is why this is not going to lead them anywhere. This is only going to add more negative impact to their heavy record of trying to silence the people but at the same time it is going to open the eyes more and more about the atrocities taking place against the Yemeni people. And this is going to be a whistleblower for others to come and join in order to release the exact and the accurate message about what is happening in Yemen.