We at INSAF Center for Defending Freedoms & Minorities welcome the release of Hamid Bin Haydara and his Baha’i companions, five months after their initial release decision, and after spending over eight years in prison – for Hamid bin Hydra – and four years for the rest of his Baha’i companions. As we express our joy with this much-delayed step, we affirm the value of freedom for them, and demand the immediate release of other prisoners of opinion in Yemen.
As much as this event represents to us here at the center and to the families of the victims, it saddens us that the released would be exiled outside Yemen. The exile of a citizen from his country is contrary to the Yemeni constitution and to all laws and norms, as well as international treaties, to which Yemen is a part of.
This plays a role in narrowing the horizon of religious and political freedoms in Yemen, and abolishes everything that promotes pluralism, public freedoms, freedom of worship & belief.
We would also like to renew the appeal to humanly consider the conditions of prisoner Libby Salem Maraibi, who has been detained for over four years, after receiving a court release order in September of last year. Yet he remains detained in the National Security prison in Sana’a, without any justification or reason other than religious considerations.
Trying to continue to abolish others can neither serve to stabilize society nor provide a strong, cohesive community integrated with its humane ideas, beliefs and values. However, it deepens the causes of hatred and conflict that lead to violence and counter-violence, and generates hatred that cannot be erased or overlooked by history.
