Yemen Monitor/Reporting Unit/Exclusive:
At the end of each academic year, the Houthi group devotes its efforts and leads intensive campaigns through its platforms, media, leadership, neighborhood heads and supervisors, to convince parents in areas under its control to enroll their children in the group’s summer centers.
The group pays great attention to its summer centers every year, mobilizes capabilities for them, spends large sums of money to support these centers, intensifies media campaigns for them, and uses intimidation and enticement methods to ensure that hundreds of thousands of young people are pushed into these remote centers and away from education, whose mission is limited to planting sectarian ideas, and it also works through them to change and distort the Yemeni identity and change its course and consolidate classism.
The Houthi group claims that these centers are “safe educational incubators to accommodate students during the summer vacation,” and says that they “play a role in building an aware generation armed with Qur’anic culture and useful sciences in light of the enemies’ efforts to spoil young people through soft war,” but in fact it is practicing deception, to brainwash the minds of generations and plant hatred and sectarianism in Yemeni society.
According to claims by Houthi leaders, these centers targeted one million and five hundred thousand Yemeni children last year, 2023, which means that this large number received brainwashing for two months, by charging them with deviant and destructive ideas that lay the foundation for violence, hatred and fighting among Yemenis to the point that a graduate of these sectarian centers does not hesitate to commit heinous crimes, starting with his family and the community in which he lives.
“Time Bombs”
Educational observers say that what the Houthi group does every year in these centers is nothing more than booby-trapping the future by mobilizing thousands of students with murderous sectarian ideas and turning them into time bombs ready to explode at any moment.
Yemeni Deputy Minister of Human Rights, Majid Fadhil, says that the Houthi summer centers pose a great danger to entire generations as children are raised on sectarian ideas, a culture of killing and terrorism, and the Houthi sectarian group works to brainwash them by distorting facts and promoting extremist ideas that target the stability and security of society.
Journalist Ahmed Shabah, on the other hand, sees that the Houthi “closed summer centers” are pure organizational jihadist training camps dedicated to train high school students and young people over (14 years old) from the descendants of the Houthi lineage and supervisors.
He added, “The targeted students in these centers are absent for more than 40 days and subjected to intensive courses in combat and ideology, and graduate elements who pledge absolute allegiance to the master of the group and enmity towards Yemen and the Arabs.”
“Booby-trapping the minds of generations”
In turn, Colonel Abdul Basset, Deputy Head of the Moral Guidance Department in the Taiz Axis, says that the danger of the Houthi summer centers is more severe than the danger of behavioral deviations, because the one who deviates in thought is extremely dangerous and difficult to convince, and the one who deviates in behavior is easy to treat and reform. And that corruption of perception is the motive and basis for corruption of action.
Al-Baher added, in his comment on the danger of these centers, saying: “It is known that the militias have swept away all sources and platforms of pure thought based on balance, moderation, such as the University of Iman, for example, and have left only the centers of abhorrent sectarian extremism and the culture of death, hatred, curses, violence and hatred. Therefore, I can say that the Houthi summer centers are booby-trapping the minds of generations and planting hatred and sectarianism in Yemeni society.”
Al-Baher stressed the importance of parents in the areas controlled by the Houthis feeling their responsibility, in light of the growing sectarian and fanatical ideas, by everyone doing their duty and responsibilities to protect the generation from superstitions and all deviations, stressing that the restoration of the state and its institutions is the most important guarantee to protect citizens from stray ideas and to restore their intellectual and behavioral rights and freedoms.
Recently, the Yemeni Coalition for Monitoring Human Rights Violations (Himma Coalition) has documented an increase in child recruitment since the Houthis began their attacks on the Red Sea in November 2023, as the Houthis are exploiting the war in Gaza and the Yemenis’ sympathy for the Palestinian cause to mobilize and recruit children.
The Houthis use schools and educational facilities for recruitment and mobilization purposes, including ending the use of school activities to indoctrinate the minds of children or incite or expose them to violent and extremist ideas.
“Relatives Are the First Victims”
Since the inauguration of these sectarian centers, the phenomenon of killing relatives in areas controlled by the group has escalated in the past four years, affecting parents, children, brothers, sisters and other relatives, in a phenomenon that Yemenis have never witnessed before.
Many observers attribute the reasons for the expansion of the phenomenon of killing relatives to the deliberate intention of the Houthi group to feed young people and children with violence and incitement to kill, as human rights reports confirm that the targeting of first-degree relatives is behind it by people who have joined the Houthi centers.
They pointed out that “brainwashing, mobilization, racial and class discrimination, and mobilizing children to the fronts, led to a major rift within the family, which caused a state of disintegration, disagreement and conflict within the same family,” and that the incitement and mobilization methods and the hate speech it consecrates has led to the consolidation of a state of hatred in the consciousness of its members, directed against the family and the society to which they belong.
Perhaps the incident of the killing of a Houthi cultural supervisor and the injury of another last week, at the hands of the guardian of a child who was sexually assaulted in one of the summer centers, in Ma’een Directorate in the capital Sana’a, is one of the examples of the results of these centers that are filled with ideas alien to Yemeni society.
And at the end of last month, a Houthi soldier who joined these centers in Aflah al-Yaman Directorate north of Hajjah Governorate, killed a child and injured another young man, without justification and prevented citizens from rescuing them for hours, in an incident that was repeated during the past eight years and in different parts of the country.
According to a previous monitoring by the Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms, 161 Yemeni citizens have been killed or injured by bullets from their children who were recruited by the Houthis since the beginning of 2021, under the influence of sectarian terrorist indoctrination and mobilization courses.
Military Centers with Extremist Ideas
According to the network, the Houthi group has assigned its leaders and security and military supervisors to oversee these summer centers, which resemble the cultural and training courses they hold for new recruits, but with shorter programs. However, these centers intensify the intellectual and mobilization activities for the Houthi’s extremist sectarian ideas, especially the booklets and leaflets of the group’s founder, Hussein al-Houthi.
The network stated that these centers practice a policy of brainwashing children and future generations with extremist ideas. Children in these centers are also subjected to physical violence and sexual harassment. The network pointed out that the training in these centers is based on virtual battles for children, training on carrying and using weapons, and preparing them as a first step in preparation for their transfer to the fighting fronts.
For its part, the Yemeni government has warned of “the dangers of these centers,” considering that they spread ideas alien to Yemeni society, brainwash children with sectarian slogans and hatred, and turn them into tools of killing and destruction, fuel for the group’s endless battles, and time bombs that threaten not only the social fabric and civil peace in Yemen, but also pose a serious threat to regional and international security and peace.”
It pointed out that “reports and field surveys conducted by a number of specialized human rights organizations have revealed that the majority of children who have been recruited by the Houthis during the past years and thrown into the fighting fronts have been lured through these centers.”
It noted that “the majority of the ‘kin-killing’ crimes that have spread in recent years in militia-controlled areas were committed by children who were recruited in those centers and enrolled in cultural courses.”
