Morality police: Invented by Iran and practiced by Houthis to extort Yemenis

Aya Ezz

With tacit Iranian orders, the Houthi militia has begun to implement the practices of what it calls the security apparatus, which Iran calls the “Guidance Patrol,” which interferes with the privacy and behavior of citizens, including the dress code. As for the Houthi militia, it has called this apparatus the morality police, through which it carries out violations against clothes vendors, shops and citizens on the street, according to what was reported by the Yemen News Agency (Saba).

During the first day of Eid al-Adha, the Houthis attacked a group of young men for allegedly violating the dress code that the militia calls “faith identity,” in accordance with their extremist ideology.

Saba confirmed that this gang arrived in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and spread in particular in Hadda Street, and the Al-Kamim Commercial Center, which is full of markets and cafes, to monitor the clothes and hairstyles of young people.

Houthi extortion

Saba reported that on the first day of Eid al-Adha, one of the elements affiliated with the morality police arrested a group of young men on charges of wearing jeans and fashionable haircuts, considering this an offense of modesty.

The youth were released after being forced to pay money, as a form of extortion, according to Saba.

Meanwhile, the newspaper Al-Yemeny al-Jadeed reported that elements of the Houthi morality police arrested two young men and deliberately shaved their hair in front of passers-by on Hadda Street in a very humiliating manner, along with insults and obscenities, and after they left them, it became clear that these young men had refused to pay the money.

Burning women’s clothes and banning high heels

According to Saba, the Houthis recently confiscated the sewing belts worn by young women over abayas and dresses, and launched a barbaric campaign to destroy mannequins displaying clothes, claiming that they were indecent.

At the beginning of this month, the militia launched a campaign to burn the covers and pictures of women’s underwear collected from Sanaa’s markets, where the campaign was met with a wave of widespread public ridicule.

According to a statement from the legitimate Yemeni government, the Houthis, through the morality police, have burned a large number of women’s gowns in more than one store during the past month, claiming that they were vulgar clothes.

Causing the mockery of many Yemenis, Houthi elements arrested a number of girls in a side street in Sanaa for wearing high-heeled shoes and dresses, claiming that the sound of heels causes sedition, although the real reason behind the matter was financial extortion, according to Akhbar al-Yemen.

For his part, Yemeni political analyst Mohammed al-Humairi said that the Houthi militia is creating crises and problems day after day through which it earns money by extorting citizens, adding that they live on theft, looting and fraud.

In an exclusive statement to the Reference, Humairi confirmed that the militia has refrained from paying the salaries of its members for several months, and the morality police came as an alternative to compensating these elements for the salaries they do not take.