Yemen Monitor/Marib/Exclusive
The National Commission for Prisoners and the Yemeni Organization for Rights reported that approximately 1600 civilians, including women and children, have been subjected to enforced disappearances in areas controlled by the Houthis.
According to documented statistics monitored by the commission and organization teams, more than 1585 civilians have been subjected to enforced disappearances for varying periods ranging from two months to five consecutive years in areas controlled by the Houthi group, including 34 women and 64 children. 136 of them remain disappeared at the time of presenting this report, including 51 former employees of international organizations and the US embassy, while the internationally recognized government is responsible for three cases of enforced disappearance.
According to the commission, the Houthi group has adopted a clear and systematic approach to practicing enforced disappearance as a means of silencing opposing voices and intimidating society. The National Commission for Prisoners and the Missing Persons team stated that it has investigated 1585 cases of enforced disappearance in areas controlled by Houthi group, all of whom are civilians, led by the politician Muhammad Qahtaan.
The report explained that the statistics indicate a pattern of these crimes, where individuals are abducted from their homes, workplaces, or even from the streets, without being charged with any clear charges or being allowed to defend themselves or communicate with lawyers.
Fahd Al-Wasabi, the head of the Di Yemeni organization and a lawyer, said that the Houthi group has not only kidnapped and disappeared employees of international and UN organizations but has also committed other violations against them that are no less serious than the crime of enforced disappearance. These violations include: fabricating serious false charges against them.
Al-Wasabi added, “These forcibly disappeared victims and the organizations they belong to have been accused of being agents, spies, traitors, and agents of America and Israel. They have also been accused of engaging in intelligence activities against Yemen, its state, and its people in all economic, political, educational, agricultural, military, and other fields.”
He pointed out that “they were forced to confess to these fabricated charges and have their confessions filmed and broadcast on all official media outlets affiliated with the Houthi group. The Houthi group’s official and private media, as well as accounts of their supporters, have continuously and centrally broadcast and disseminated hate speech, incitement, and defamation against the disappeared and the organizations they belong to.”
Al-Wasabi affirmed that “these serious crimes pose a great danger to those forcibly disappeared, their families, their organizations, and their colleagues working in them. All of them are victims and have been harmed by these crimes against those forcibly disappeared.”
During the event held in Marib, the statement issued by the Commission for Prisoners and the Missing Persons and the Di Yemeni organization called on the Yemeni government to urgently join the International Convention for the Protection of all persons from enforced disappearance, adhere to it, and incorporate its provisions into its laws and legislation. It also called for activating national human rights protection mechanisms throughout Yemen, particularly judicial mechanisms to protect citizens from the crime of enforced disappearance and to convict its perpetrators.
The statement also called on the Houthi group to immediately release those forcibly disappeared in their prisons, including employees of UN and international organizations, to stop incitement and hate speech against those forcibly disappeared and their organizations and activities, and to stop obstructing the work of relief and humanitarian organizations and interfering in their activities and directing them to serve their goals.
The statement called on the United Nations to take swift, serious, and effective action to release all those forcibly disappeared in Houthi prisons, including UN employees, and to work to achieve justice for the victims and to convict the perpetrators of these violations against them.
Radwan Masoud, head of the National Commission for Prisoners and the Missing, condemned this treatment in a press statement, saying that this treatment has led the Houthis to double their violations against civilians, going as far as kidnapping an employee of the UN envoy’s office and storming the office of the Human Rights Commissioner in Sana’a.
Masoud, in his statement, referred to the appeals of the UN envoy’s office to Omani diplomacy to intervene to release UN employees in the Houthi prisons, calling on the United Nations and its envoy to Yemen to deal with the matter seriously and pressure the Houthis to release all detainees, including the internationals.
