Since March 2010, human rights defender Ms Afrah Sa'eed has been subjected to increasingly serious harassment and intimidation because of her work in defence of others. Afrah Sa’eed is the Secretary General of the Arab Foundation for the Support of Women and Juveniles and the information coordinator at the Yemeni Organization for the Defense of Democratic Rights and Freedom.

Further Information

For the last four months, Afrah Sa'eed and her daughter have received a number of threatening and abusive phone calls. Afrah Sa'eed's telephone usage has been monitored and she has been followed in the streets. The door of her apartment has been knocked on and the glass in the windows smashed in the middle of the night, while her electricity supply and internet connection have been regularly cut off. Her computer system has also been hacked. In an attempt to force her to sign a pledge agreeing to stop her human rights activities, Afrah Sa'eed's salary has been cut for two successive months and a government scholarship which her son had been receiving to finance his studies in Syria has also been reduced. This came after he was summoned to the Yemeni embassy in Damascus and accused of participating in a sit-in in front of the embassy.

Afrah Sa’eed has been active in reporting on human rights violations, including those by the army and security apparatus, in southern Yemen. Since 2009, she has liaised with and met representatives of many international human rights organisations, including Front Line. It is believed that this is one of the reasons why the current campaign of harassment and intimidation has been launched against her.

Front Line believes that Afrah Sa’eed and members of her family have been targeted and harassed because of Afrah Sa’eed's work as a human rights defender, especially in relation to monitoring and reporting human rights violations in southern Yemen.