A year of blatant Houthi violations against Yemenis

Nora Bandari

The year 2019 is about to end, and the Yemeni people have not yet disposed of the Houthi militia, nor of its continuing terrorist crimes, and as usual, the Yemeni people are suspending their hopes and aspirations on the year 2020, that the year of eliminating the terrorist militia that made Yemen suffer from the scourge of war, poverty, epidemics and displacement. That resulted in more casualties due to the Houthi conflict and its violations against the Yemeni people.

To document the situation of Yemen, the United Nations General Assembly Development Program issued some indicators that dealt with the situation of Yemen in 2019, so Yemen ranked first in the Fragile Countries Index in 2019, which ranks 178 countries in the world, based on the challenges it faces.

Yemen is among the six countries that are the least peaceful in the world in the World Peace Report, and Yemen ranks among the six least happy countries in the world in 2019. Yemen came at the bottom of the happiness report, ranking 151 out of 156 countries in the world, according to the World Happiness Index 2019.

Houthi terrorist crimes

During the year 2019, the Houthis committed many crimes against civilians, in addition to carrying out terrorist operations against countries in the region and the world, and a member of the International Peace and Development Alliance Murad Al-Garati explained in a human rights symposium that at the beginning of 2019, the Houthi militia committed a huge amount of brutal crimes.

For civilians, it relates to education and health, killings, bombings, torture, kidnappings, enforced disappearances and other human rights violations.

In addition to the terrorist operations carried out by the revolutionary militia against the Arab coalition countries, the most dangerous of which was the Armcoa September attack 2019 as the terrorist militia targeted two Aramco oil installations in the eastern region, and during 2019, the Houthis launched rockets across the border, targeting Saudi air bases and other facilities.

On November 16, 2019, the Houthi militia kidnapped and robbed the Korean naval locomotive, Rabigh-3, south of the Red Sea, which it soon released on Iranian orders when it discovered that the ships were not Saudi.

In September 2019, the coup militia prevented the United Nations team from accessing the Safir tanker, the floating oil tank 4 years ago, off the coast of Hodeidah in the Red Sea. This could lead to an environmental disaster in the Red Sea threatening the countries of the Middle East region.

In 2019, and specifically after the signing of the Riyadh Agreement between the legitimate government and the Southern Transitional Council in September 2019, Iran worked to provide Houthi with more weapons and explosives to carry out its terrorist operations. This was revealed, on October 28.

On December 15, 2019, a U.S. Navy and Coast Guard team seized a boat in the northern Arabian Sea, which was carrying sophisticated weapons that Iran sent to the Houthis.

Houthi and human rights violations

The year 2019 witnessed an increase in Al-Houthi’s violations, according to the statistics issued by the field team of the Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms and Organizations, during the period from January 1, 2019 to April 20, 2019.

Al-Houthi committed about (11384) violations of human rights against women, children, civilians in areas In the Yemeni province of Hajjah. These violations varied between killing, physical attacks, arrests, kidnappings and forced displacement, in addition to 3996 cases of violations and looting that affected the private property of citizens, including cases of house blowing, storming, searching and looting of money and shops.

From the outbreak of the war in March 2015 to August 2019, UNICEF revealed the killing and wounding of more than 6,700 Yemeni children, and every year 30,000 Yemeni children die because of malnutrition in 17 Yemeni governorates.

The Houthi militia continues to violate women’s rights in Yemen, as it committed between 2014 and September 2019 more than 20,000 cases of violations against women in Yemen, between killing and physical assault and cases of violence, especially in cities and areas controlled by Houthi.

In October 2019, the Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights revealed that 320 women are still being held in militia prisons, and in early December 2019, human rights organizations accused the Houthi group of holding hundreds of girls and women in Sana’a, holding them in illegal prisons, and filing false charges against them, with the aim of blackmailing their relatives.

On September 23, 2019, Al-Houthi granted special permits to Al-Zainabiyyah, “the woman’s force that it recruits,” allowing them to enter any location and location, regardless of its privacy and confidentiality, at any time without permission or approval, including homes, hotels, rooms, palaces, and private and public places, without any prior arrangement.