Aden (Union)
The Yemeni government confirmed that the Houthi group has used enforced disappearance as a tool to silence and terrorize opponents since its coup against the state, which weakens any efforts to achieve peace and stability.
Yemeni Minister of Information, Muammar Al-Eryani, said yesterday in a press statement on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Enforced Disappearances: “The Houthis have kidnapped tens of thousands of state leaders, politicians, media professionals, journalists, activists and human rights activists, and 51 employees of the United Nations, international and local organizations and the US Embassy from their homes, workplaces and checkpoints, and have committed the most heinous crimes and violations against them, including arbitrary detention, psychological and physical torture, enforced disappearance, and depriving them of their most basic rights.”
Al-Eryani pointed out that specialized human rights organizations documented the Houthi group’s commission of the crime of enforced disappearance against 2,406 civilians, including 133 women and 117 children in 17 governorates from January 2017 until mid-2023, noting that the group runs about 641 detention centers, including 237 official prisons and 128 secret detention centers that it created after the coup. He also noted that 32 abductees were subjected to physical liquidation, while others committed suicide to escape the cruelty and brutality of torture. There were also 79 deaths of abductees and 31 deaths of abductees from heart attacks, due to medical negligence and refusal to take them to hospitals.
The Yemeni Minister of Information stressed that the Houthi group is committing these heinous crimes that amount to war crimes and violate all international laws, including the Geneva Conventions and their protocols, which criminalize enforced disappearance as a crime against humanity in flagrant violation of the right to freedom and personal security, and contravene the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and leave devastating psychological and physical effects on families, who live in a state of pain and suffering in search of their disappeared relatives.
Al-Eryani called on the international community, the United Nations, and human rights organizations and bodies to exert real pressure on the Houthis to reveal the fate of all those forcibly disappeared, their places of detention, put an end to their tragedy, work to release them immediately, hold those responsible for these crimes accountable, and provide support to the victims and their families.
Meanwhile, human rights organizations called, in a statement, on the international community to take serious action to release 136 abductees and forcibly disappeared persons in Houthi prisons, including 51 employees of the United Nations and the US Embassy in Yemen.
The statement stressed that the Houthi group has adopted the methodology of enforced disappearance since its coup at the end of 2014 and uses it as a means of intimidation to silence its opponents and subjugate society to it, calling on the United Nations and its special envoy to Yemen, and all concerned international organizations, to take serious action to release all those abducted and forcibly disappeared in Houthi prisons, and to work to provide justice to the victims and condemn the perpetrators of these violations.
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