A group of
Yemeni activists and journalists launched a campaig to demand the release of
the resigned Prime Minister Khalid Mahfoudh Bahah who had been under a houthi-imposed
house arrest for over a month.
A statement
issued by "for a safe Yemen"
campaign strongly deplored the continued detention of PM Bahah by the houthi
militia despite submission of his resignation a month ago and rejecting the
caretaking capacity assigned by the revolutionary committee whicg was produced
by the coup.
Yemeni youth
activists are cirulating statements and hashtags to call for Bahah's release. Such
calls were disseminated by the campaign in three languages (Arabic, English and
French) across the social media websites- Facebook and Twitter.
"For a safe Yemen" is the firsf youth initiative to break the
silence against the houthi militias by taking it to the streets since the
morning of 28 September only a week after Sanaa's takeover. The campaign
continues to organize protests and demonstrations against the houthi coup.
In a related
issue, "No to the Coup" movement declared support for the campaign
and willingness to organize a peaceful demonstration to call for the release of
the Prime Minister who is detained by the Houthis.
Yemeni authorities need to send a clear message to their security forces, including Ansar Allah members, that beating and otherwise mistreating peaceful protesters won’t be tolerated. People have a right to demonstrate, and the blanket ban on protests should be lifted immediately.
Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director
(Sanaa) –Yemeni security forces and militia have beaten peaceful protesters and mistreated those arrested during demonstrations in the capital, Sanaa, since late January 2015, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should hold those responsible for serious abuses accountable, and rescind an indefinite ban on unauthorized protests issued on February 8.
Between January 25 and February 11, Yemeni security forces and men who appeared to be members of the Houthi armed group, also known as Ansar Allah, repeatedly beat peaceful protesters with sticks and rifle butts, witnesses said. They arbitrarily detained at least 46 protesters, though most were released the same day, according to local rights groups. Militias detained another 10 people near demonstration sites for up to 13 days. On February 11, Ansar Allah militia detained three men attempting to join a protest and tortured them, two of the victims told Human Rights Watch. The other victim later died.
“Yemeni authorities need to send a clear message to their security forces, including Ansar Allah members, that beating and otherwise mistreating peaceful protesters won’t be tolerated,” saidJoe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director. “People have a right to demonstrate, and the blanket ban on protests should be lifted immediately.”
The authorities should act responsibly and hold anyone who abuses protesters to account, Human Rights Watch said.
Since November 2014, Ansar Allah, a northern armed group, has taken effective control of Sanaa and other areas, leading to the resignation of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his government on January 22, 2015. This sparked protests on January 25 and the days leading up to February 11, the fourth anniversary of the 2011 uprising. A February 8 Interior Ministryorderinstructs Sanaa police to prevent unauthorized demonstrations “considering the exceptional circumstances that the country is facing.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed 31 protesters and other witnesses, including 10 who had been detained, and monitored demonstrations on January 25, 26, 29, and 31. Between 30 and 80 people took part in those protests on each day. Law enforcement consisted of armed men in police and military uniforms as well as armed men in civilian dress bearing Ansar Allah stickers on their rifles and carrying posters with the Ansar Allah slogan: “God is Great/Death to America/Death to Israel/Curse the Jews/Victory to Islam.”
A 30-year-old protester, Abd al-Daem al-Bukhari, said that on January 28, “One gunman started shouting that we were agents of America and Israel. My legs are covered in bruises because one man hit me with a stick.”
Protesters told Human Rights Watch that the armed men beat and otherwise mistreated them, including in detention. Those who had been detained said that their captors threatened to “disappear” them. They said that both the uniformed officers and the Ansar Allah members cursed the protesters and accused them of supporting the extremist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS), the United States, and Israel. Human Rights Watch saw no indication that any of the protesters were armed or in any way threatened law enforcement officers.
One witness said that during the February 11 protest, men he identified as belonging to the Ansar Allah militia stabbed two protesters in the neck with jambiyas, the traditional dagger Yemeni men carry. Two protesters told Human Rights Watch that armed men in civilian dress beat them unconscious with sticks and rifle butts as they tried to approach the demonstration, and detained five protesters.
Local journalists were constrained from reporting on the demonstrations, Human Rights Watch said. The Freedom Foundation, a Yemeni organization that monitors press freedom, reported 25 attacks on journalists during the first two protests in late January. The incidents, most at or near the protests, included abductions, detentions, beatings, and confiscation of equipment.
The government’s indefinite ban on unauthorized public protests violates the right to peaceful assembly, Human Rights Watch said. Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Yemen ratified in 1987, permits restrictions on peaceful assembly to protect national security and public order only if they are narrowly defined and proportionate to the harm threatened, and to the extent they are strictly necessary.
Yemeni authorities should also abide by the United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, which provide that all security forces shall whenever possible apply nonviolent means before resorting to force. They should not use firearms against people except to prevent imminent death or serious injury.
“Given the big political changes in Yemen in recent weeks, people will want to voice their views,” Stork said. “The authorities need to ensure that people who want to speak out peacefully are protected, not beaten and abused.”
Accounts of Violence Against Protesters, January 25 to February 11, 2015
January 25 Ghamdan al-Samai, 30, a journalist who was at the demonstration, told Human Rights Watch that at about 9:30 a.m. protesters gathered at Change Square, in front of the main entrance to Sanaa University to demonstrate against Ansar Allah. The protesters opposed the group’s armed presence in various cities, its confiscation of weapons from the military arsenal, control of public property, and its restrictions on the government and president. By 11 a.m., at least 40 protesters were preparing to leave the square to march to the Parliament, which was holding a session on the recent events.
Human Rights Watch observed at least 20 police officers and 4 men who appeared to be Ansar Allah members, all armed with Kalashnikov assault weapons, standing along one edge of the square, next to seven armored vehicles, two without license plates. Most officers carried rifles bearing stickers with Ansar Allah slogans. On the opposite side of Change Square, Human Rights Watch saw two military officers armed with Kalashnikovs and a third holding a rifle-propelled grenade.
The police officers approached the crowd and without warning started beating unarmed protesters with rifle butts and batons, witnesses told Human Rights Watch. They arrested 22 protesters, including Samed Muhamad, 23, a university student and editor of Al-Oula newspaper, he told Human Rights Watch. Officers loaded them into armored vehicles and drove them to al-Ghudairi police station.
“All the protesters were peaceful, they were carrying only books and pens,” said Hussein al-Houthaifi, 24, a writer who was there. He said he tried to stop officers from pushing his female colleague to the ground. Five officers surrounded him and two hit him in the head with rifle butts and dragged him to their armored vehicle. When he asked for medical attention they refused and took him to al-Ghudairi police station.
Muhamad al-Omdah, another protester, said:
The officers pointed guns to our head as they loaded us into the armored vehicles. I heard one policeman say to his fellow officers, “If one tries to escape, shoot him!” All of them had Ansar Allah stickers on their guns. Even though they were in uniform, the men who later questioned us were members of Ansar Allah – I saw the sticker on most of their weapons – and they looked much younger than typical policemen.
Several witnesses told Human Rights Watch that about 15 minutes after the crowd of protesters in Change Square had dispersed, at least 15 officers in police and the Special Security Force uniforms stormed through the gates of Sanaa University. They fired above the heads of about 15 to 20 students who were petitioning to have an exam postponed because of the situation in the city. No one was injured.
January 26 At 9 a.m. dozens of apparent Ansar Allah members as well as police and Special Security Force personnel marched from al-Qadissya roundabout to Change Square, about 2 kilometers away, where protesters had gathered. The Ansar Allah supporters blocked Sanaa University’s main gate, preventing protesters and students alike from passing through.
Within half-an-hour, about 80 protesters had gathered outside the gate, intending to march to the presidential residence, said Salah al-Muhamadi, 34, an activist who participated. Armored vehicles covered in Ansar Allah slogans arrived at about 10:50 a.m. and blocked the roads leading from Change Square. Al-Muhamadi said that dozens of Ansar Allah supporters arrived in vehicles and threatened and assaulted protesters, stabbing one of them.
Six protesters told Human Rights Watch at the scene that the Ansar Allah supporters had beaten them with fists, sticks, and stones. Ahmed al-Dhubhani, 21, a student and activist, said he saw the officers and apparent Ansar Allah members put about four protesters into civilian vehicles.
Khalid Abd al-Hadi, a journalist for Al-Masdar newspaper, told Human Rights Watch that at about 10:45 a.m., just a few minutes before the armed men assaulted protesters in the square, he saw about a half-dozen men in police and Special Security Force uniforms instructing two groups of men in civilian clothes carrying wooden sticks.
Al-Dhubhani said that he and a female cousin ran from the area as the armed men assaulted members of the crowd. The two entered the gate of a private house and explained their situation to the homeowner, who called out for security. Police and other armed men came and took al-Dhubhani away, but left his cousin. Al-Dhubhani said:
I was detained by armed men, some in security uniforms, others in traditional [Yemeni] clothes, at about 11 a.m. They put me in the back of a regular car and blindfolded me, hitting me all the time with their hands and jambiyas. They drove me to the yard of an abandoned Hilton Hotel near Freedom Square – I figured the location out later – and put me in an old dirty room, with one of my colleagues, [name withheld] who had also been at the protest.
After two hours they blindfolded me again and took me to a converted shipping container in a yard with several containers that used to be used by [President] Hadi’s guards before Ansar Allah took the presidential residence. There two men in police uniforms interrogated me in a container with several rooms. In the other rooms they were holding two other protesters, Marwan Al-Sabri and Khaled Aldaara. The policemen punched and slapped me, and accused me of being a paid CIA spy. They kept asking me how much money the Americans were paying me and the other protesters.
Finally, they forced me to thumbprint a pledge not to participate in any demonstrations. It said something like, “I am Ahmed. I admit in writing that I am not a tool of US intelligence, and I am not affiliated to Tawakkol Karman [a Nobel laureate and prominent Islah party member] and I am abandoning my revolutionary and political principles in exchange for my release.” They released me about 10 p.m. that night.
Tawfiq al-Qawri, 32, an activist at the protest, told Human Rights Watch that a man in civilian clothes accused him of being an ISIS supporter and threated to “disappear” him. He said armed men were stationed along all the alleyways and roads leading out from Change Square.
January 29 At 10:45 a.m. Human Rights Watch saw about 50 people gathered in front of the Sanaa University Gate to protest against Ansar Allah. They started marching and at about 11 a.m. reached al-Karama roundabout on al-Da’iri Street. A soldier driving a car with civilian license plates pulled up in front of the crowd. Four men got out, two in police uniform and two in civilian dress. One of them grabbed Abd al-Rahman Noman, 33, a businessman leading the protest, who had been arrested at the January 25 protest. The other three men, all carrying Kalashnikovs, forced him into the car and sped off. Noman later told Human Rights Watch that they held him in a converted shipping container and released him that night.
January 31 About 30 people gathered for an anti-Ansar Allah protest at 10:15 a.m. in Change Square. Human Rights Watch observed a group of at least 25 people with pro-Ansar Allah posters enter the square, followed by at least three armored vehicles and three police cars. Farida al-Yarimi, a 53-year-old protester, said that the group assaulted several protesters, beating them with sticks, punching, and slapping them for about 15 minutes until the crowd dispersed. One protester’s forehead was cut, she said. Another said that he saw armed men in civilian dress catch a well-known activist and beat him with sticks and their hands while they chanted Ansar Allah slogans.
Fouad al-Hamdani, 34, a political activist linked to the Islah party, told Human Rights Watch that at 11:15 a.m. he and a female activist were walking away from the protest area. Six armed men in military uniforms grabbed them both and threw them into a Jeep without license plates. The vehicle bore the Ansar Allah slogan and inside was a photo of the Ansar Allah leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, indicating they were Ansar Allah militia members. Al-Hamdani asked the men to release the woman, whom they let out after a few minutes. As they drove off, one man told him that they would kill anyone who was against Ansar Allah.
The men brought him to al-Mualimi police station, al-Hamdani told Human Rights Watch. They took away his cell phone and went through the call log, seeing his calls to Tawakkol Karman and other politicians opposed to Ansar Allah. They accused him of leading the protest and locked him in a cell. At 6 p.m., they drove him in a black car without plates, with the Ansar Allah slogan on the sides, to a guard room next to the presidential residence:
Men there, some in police or military uniforms and some in civilian clothes, interrogated me until midnight. The next day, at about 4 p.m. they drove me to the abandoned Hilton Hotel near Freedom Square and locked me in a dirty bathroom off the courtyard for four days without electricity or running water, and gave me barely any food. One guard told me: “We were going to release you but then we realized that you are one of the dangerous leaders so we decided not to. We want you to work with us as a member of the Popular Committees of Ansar Allah.” I refused.
They held him at that site until February 12, when the same men who had detained him returned, blindfolded him, and drove him to al-Iman University, one of the key targets of Ansar Allah during its military operations in Sanaa in September 2014. Later that day four guards shackled and blindfolded him, tied him to a metal table and beat him with a thick rope on his hip while one man covered his nose and mouth for short periods of time to prevent him from breathing. Al-Hamdani said that at one point one of the guards yelled, “Be careful, he is going to die if you keep holding his nose!” The other responded, “Let him die.” They videotaped all of the interrogations, he told Human Rights Watch:
After beating me, they forced me to write a note saying that Tawakkol Karman is a terrorist, that she receives funds from the US embassy, and a few other accusations. They said that they would kill me if I went back to the protests and then drove me to a street corner at around midnight and pushed me out of the car.
February 7 Ghamdan al-Samai, 30, a journalist, told Human Rights Watch that he watched protesters opposed to Ansar Allah gather in Change Square in the morning. More than two dozen police officers and armed men in civilian dress arrived and started punching and beating protesters with sticks. The police detained 11 protesters. Al-Dhubhani, who had been arrested at the January 26 protest, told Human Rights Watch that they released nine within 24 hours but only released him and one other protester, Rashad al-Mikhlafi, five days later.
February 11 Saleh al-Bishri, 33, a teacher, drove to a Sanaa protest on February 11in a pickup truck with two colleagues, Ali Taher al-Faqih, 34, and Abd al-Ghaleel al-Subari, 38, and a friend Mansour al-Nidhami, 33, along with a dozen men who rode in the back of the truck. When men in uniform stopped them in Sanaa’s Assir neighborhood, near the protest, the men in the back of the truck disembarked. Four armed men in different uniforms bearing Ansar Allah shoulder patches forced al-Bishri to keep driving with the three passengers to the Faj Attan area of Sanaa. The armed men then blindfolded them and drove them to an unknown location and held them until the morning of February 14.
Al-Faqih told Human Rights Watch that their captors put them in into one big room but separated them on February 13:
At 8 p.m., they put us into separate rooms and shackled my hands and feet. They came to me after a few hours and started beating me with an iron rod on my hip while I lay on the floor. I lost consciousness after 30 minutes. At about 2 o’clock the next morning they brought me to a car, where I saw my friends. Al-Bishri was crying in pain and could not stand. I heard one of the armed men say, “We can take him back to beat him for another five hours.” Al-Subari told me that they beat him for about 15 minutes. Al-Nidhami said they did not beat him. They drove us in al-Bishri’s car blindfolded to al-Zubari Street and at about 2:30 a.m. disembarked there and left us with the car.
They drove straight to al-Ahli hospital. Al-Faqih told Human Rights Watch that although a doctor told al-Bishri not to travel, all four were fearful of Ansar Allah coming back for them, so they left. Al-Bishri died along the way back to his village at about 5 a.m. Human Rights Watch saw videos showing his severely bruised hips.
Al-Subari told Human Rights Watch that three or four of his captors shackled and blindfolded him, forced him to kneel, and beat him with sticks for 15 minutes. While beating him they asked how much the United States and Saudi Arabia were paying him to attend the protests, accused him of being an American and a Zionist, and threatened that they would further punish him if he continued to demonstrate, saying, “What you have seen is only a drop of the ocean.”
New harrowing testimony collected by Amnesty International experts in Yemen reveal how members of the Huthi armed group are torturing protesters in a bid to dissuade dissent.
“The Huthi stooped to a dangerous new level of intimidation and violence to strike fear into anyone protesting their rule,” said Donatella Rovera, Senior Crisis Response Adviser at Amnesty International, currently in Yemen.
“Testimonies reveal how protestors have been detained and tortured for days on end. The safety of all those who dare to speak out against the Huthi rule is on the line.”
Among those who spoke to Amnesty International are Ali Taher al-Faqih, 34, and ‘Abdeljalil al-Subari, 40, who were seized during a peaceful demonstration in Sana’a on 11 February (held to commemorate the 11 February 2011 uprising). The two men were arrested alongside Salah ‘Awdh al-Bashri, a 35-year-old father of seven, who later died from the injuries he suffered after hours of torture.
The three, alongside a fourth activist who was not tortured, were taken to an unknown location, where they were held in a basement until the evening of 13 February.
When Amnesty International met the men on 15 February the marks and scars of their torture were still very evident with deep bruises and, in the case of Abdeljalil al-Subari, open wounds on their buttocks.
Ali Taher al-Faqih told Amnesty International: “The first to be taken was Salah [al-Bashri]. I did not see him again until we were released at about 2 am (on 14 February). Salah could not move or stand, not even when we tried to help him up, and could not speak. He just whispered ‘I’m thirsty’.”
“We went to hospital, where Salah was given some basic care. There were Huthis in the hospital, some in military wear, and we were afraid that they would abduct us again so we left the hospital and drove home [two hours away], but Salah’s conditions deteriorated and he died on the way.”
Ali Taher al-Faqih gave details of the interrogation he endured:
“They first sat me down and asked me about my job, the demonstrations I took part in, the leaders of the protests, my relations with the US embassy and with organizations opposed to Ansarullah (the Huthi political wing). They then blindfolded and gagged me. They tied my hands behind my back, bound my feet, made me lie face down on a sort of narrow table and started beating me with some sort of baton on the buttocks. The beating went on for a long time, maybe a couple of hours. The pain was excruciating. They kept telling me to confess. When they finally stopped beating me I was only semi-conscious. They had to help me up.”
Amnesty International also spoke to Fouad Ahmad Jaber al-Hamdani, a well-known 34-year-old activist, who was abducted from a very small demonstration on the morning of 31 January. He was held for 13 days in four different locations and was also tortured. He still has deep bruising on his lower back.
“They blindfolded and gagged me, tied my hands and feet, tied me face down to a narrow bench, and beat me on the buttocks and lower back with a baton or iron bar until I fainted. They said ‘will you talk or shall we make you talk?’ They accused me of getting money from the US and Saudi Arabia and of links with Muslim Brotherhood terrorists and certain figures associated with the previous regime. After four hours of continuous beatings, during which I fainted several times, I agreed to write a confession. They then untied me, warned me not to organize demonstrations or contact Huthi opponents, and drove me to Zubeiri Street. They dumped me by the roadside. I could not move and lay there until a passer-by rescued me.”
In an earlier case, 21-year-old student activist Ahmad al-Thubhani was seized following a protest on the morning of 7 February near the New Sana’a University. Five members of the Huthi armed group followed the taxi he was travelling in, stopped it and seized him. He was held for five days in a house next to the residence of former President Abd Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi where he was tortured.
He told Amnesty International: “After I told them that I was against militias, they whipped me 20 times in a row, mostly on my back and legs, and forced me to write down names of protest leaders and activists”. Photographs of his scars examined by Amnesty International are consistent with his story.
“The Huthis must put an immediate stop to their illegal tactics of arbitrary detentions, torture other ill-treatment. Yemen’s General Prosecutor must promptly investigate these and other similar cases and bring those responsible to justice,” said Donatella Rovera.
Background information
The Huthis, mostly members of the (northern) Zaidi Shi’a minority who were repeatedly targeted by the regime of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh (in six conflicts) between 2004 and 2010, are now allegedly targeting their critics and subjecting them to some of the same human rights violations which were inflicted on them by the previous regime.
The group took over some army and security positions in Sana'a in September 2014. By the third week of January 2015 they had attacked military positions, the Presidential compounds and government buildings. This led to the resignation of President Abd Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi and his government and the Huthis becoming the de-facto rulers of the capital and other parts of Yemen.
They have been consolidating their hold on Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, and the country as a whole. On 6 February they dissolved parliament and issued a constitutional declaration mandating the creation of a transitional presidential council which will act as a government for an interim period of two years.
The move effectively ended the (largely unfulfilled) reconciliation power-sharing initiative negotiated by the Gulf Cooperation Council to end the 2011 uprising which ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh after his 33-year-rule.
SANA, Yemen — The Houthi rebels in Yemen, who
effectively forced the country’s president and cabinet to resign last month, announced
on Friday that they intend to dissolve Parliament and take control of the
country, which does not now have a functioning government.
Houthi officials said the plan would be put into
effect quickly, but they conceded that the process might take weeks to complete.
They said they would name a national council to replace the Parliament, which
would in turn choose a committee to select a new president.
“The revolutionary movement has
always been quick — it won’t take that long,” said Ali al-Imad, a member of the
Houthi political bureau. “It’s not important when, so much as that we now have
a political road map.”
The apparent power grab by the Houthis threatens to
further destabilize a country whose previous government had been a significant
American ally in the fight against Al Qaeda, which has a major presence in the
impoverished country. It may also worsen Yemen’s
relationship with its wealthy northern neighbor, Saudi
Arabia, which already has cut off badly needed aid to Yemen because of the growing power of the
Houthis, who are believed to be financed by Iran.
Yemen has
been without formal leadership since Jan. 22, when President Abdu Rabbu Mansour
Hadi and his entire cabinet abruptly resigned. The Houthis had surrounded the
presidential palace and effectively put Mr. Hadi under house arrest. An
agreement the two sides reached to ease the crisis and overhaul the government
swiftly fell apart, leading to the resignations.
The Houthis mainly belong to a Shiite Muslim sect, the
Zaydis, who make up nearly one-third of the country’s population and are
dominant in the north. The Houthis are anti-American, but they are even more
opposed to Al Qaeda, whose regional affiliate is powerful in the Sunni tribal
areas of Yemen,
particularly in the oil-rich east and south.
The plans for a new government, decreed unilaterally
by the Houthis in the name of their “revolutionary committees,” were announced
at a meeting of many of their leaders and officials at a government building, the
Republican Palace.
The announcement came after the apparent collapse on
Thursday of talks among the Houthis and Yemen’s many political parties that
were aimed at forming a government to replace Mr. Hadi and his cabinet. Houthi
militiamen closed off a wide area of the city around the palace on Friday, including
Tahrir Square,
the focus of many antigovernment demonstrations in the past.
“People have expectations, and
we’re trying to fulfill those expectations,” said Leyla Lutf, a top official of
the Arab Spring party, which is aligned with the Houthi-led revolutionary
committees. She, too, was unsure how long the new process would take, but she
said, “When you know the target, you know how to reach it.”
Houthi leaders portrayed the plan for a new government
as the product of a consensus among Yemen’s political factions. When it
was announced, a spokesman, Jamal Asodi, said the new government would be
“based on the Constitution,” but he added, “so long as it does not conflict
with the revolution.”
Abdul Karim al Khiwani, a prominent dissident
journalist and Houthi supporter, said that “all walks of life” were represented
in the revolutionary committees and that only “one or two” of Yemen’s parties
opposed the new plan.
One of those opposed is Islah, an important Sunni
Islamist party whose reluctance to agree on a presidential committee with other
parties was one of the reason the talks failed Thursday.
The unilateral declaration by the Houthis was also likely
to be unpopular in southern Yemen, where separatist sentiment is strong, and in
tribal areas where the Yemeni government and the Houthis have tried to win
Sunni loyalties away from extremist groups like Al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula. Northern and southern Yemen were separate, often
antagonistic, countries from 1968 to 1990.
Criticism of the Houthis’ action came quickly on
Friday. “This is a clear coup against democracy and constitutional legitimacy,”
said Majid Alshadadi, 35, an education ministry official from Ibb Province.
He accused former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has allied himself with the
Houthis, of being behind the move. “This is the beginning of the end of the
Houthis,” he said.
The plan calls for the Houthis’ revolutionary committees
to select a 551-member national council. The council will take the place of the
national Parliament, which continued to meet despite questions about its
legality even before Mr. Hadi resigned. The new national council is to choose a
five-member presidential commission, which in turn would choose a new president,
according to the statement that Mr. Asodi read at the palace.
“Change will come quickly,” Mr. Khiwani
said, adding that the revolutionary committees began meeting immediately after
the announcement on Friday, and that senior security officials were present. Even
so, he said, it may take weeks to establish the new government and name a
president.
Yemen faces
a serious economic crisis and is running out of money. Just how much longer it
can continue paying public-sector workers is an open question, and a worrisome
one because the government is the largest employer in the capital.
“To some extent, things are kind of
on pause right now, and running on autopilot,” said April Longley Alley, the
senior Yemen analyst at the International Crisis Group. “The Houthis have a
pretty solid control over the security situation in Sana. It’s been quiet for a couple weeks. But
that can’t go on forever without a political compromise.
“The Houthis know that, and other
groups do, too,” she continued. “They’re going to start butting up against some
hard fiscal realities.”
The Houthis’ television station, al-Maseera TV, broadcast
an announcement Friday evening calling on members of the revolutionary
committees to celebrate the new plan by setting off fireworks, which soon lit
up the skies over the capital.
--------------
Shuaib Almosawa contributed reporting.
==========
Photo Comment:
Houthi fighters patrol Sana,
the capital of Yemen,
which does not have a functioning government and has been without a president
since Jan. 22. Tyler
Hicks/The New York Times
SANA, Yemen — Twelve-year-old Nefisa Nasser lined up four jerrycans by a faucet on
the side of a busy street, patiently waiting her turn to fill them with water. She
completed the daily routine, capping each container and sliding it into a
wheelbarrow that she pushed back home through the clamor of morning traffic.
“Sometimes she comes back crying,” said her father, Muhammed
Nasser, as Nefisa sat nearby on a folded bedspread. “Of course it pains me,” he
said, “but our circumstances are difficult.”
Difficult is just how life is in Yemen, yesterday, today and every
day. It does not matter that the president and his cabinet have resigned, that
the government has not functioned for weeks, or that the gunmen in control of
the streets say they plan to set up a new regime to their own liking.
Families have always had to struggle to get through their days in a
country where the government has long been incapable of delivering essential
services. There is hardly any running water now — and there was hardly any
before the political crisis.
“In this country, people are accustomed to managing
their lives without the state,” said Abdullah Alrahabi, who dug a well years
ago on his property to supplement the critically short supply from the official
system. He also supplies water to neighboring schools and mosques, and provides
the free outlet Ms. Nasser uses every morning. “We don’t even rely on the state
for the most basic services,” Mr. Alrahabi said.
Take Mr. Nasser, for example. He spent one recent morning, as he does
many mornings, negotiating to reduce the fines on traffic tickets issued for a
minibus he owns and rents out. Then he borrowed $250 to put the vehicle back on
the street. At home, his wife prepared lunch for their five children and a few
visiting relatives, just as she almost always does, without running water or
electricity.
She strapped a flashlight to her forehead and used the water her
daughter brought to cook a dish made of dough and broth.
To be sure, Yemenis are now confronting a whole new level of political
uncertainty. The Shiite Houthi militia from the north has taken over the
capital and has announced plans to name a new national council and eventually a
new president. Southern separatists are fighting to break the country back up
into two independent states. The former longtime president, Ali Abdullah Saleh,
who was driven from power by popular protests in 2012, appears to be using old
loyalties to renew his sway.
But people here say everyday life is unchanged.
Mr. Alrahabi, a manager in the president’s foreign relations office, said
he continued to go to work, as he has done for 20 years, knowing that he is
performing a perfunctory role in a system with crippled institutions.
“Let’s just say we live in a quasi-state,” Mr. Alrahabi
said plainly.
That sentiment echoed from door to door in the capital, exposing the
deep social disarray at the heart of the current political crisis. Yemenis have
withstood the momentary leadership vacuum not by relying on state institutions
but by turning to geographic, religious and tribal safety nets that have never
been fully united under a strong, shared national identity.
The fissures in Yemen
today are largely the legacy of Mr. Saleh, who ruled for decades and
deliberately kept the formal state frail while emphasizing his personal hold on
power, experts and officials here said.
“His role is that of the devil,” said Hasan Zaid, a
minister of state and a member of the cabinet of Mr. Saleh’s successor, Abdu
Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who resigned two weeks ago. “You keep discovering how weak
state institutions are. The army and police are sizable, but they are closer to
militias belonging to the former president and his family than to a national
force.”
Fearing the growing strength of his government’s military and
intelligence agencies, Mr. Saleh had created parallel security bodies and
placed them in the hands of his son and nephew. After he was ousted in the wave
of Arab Spring revolutions, Yemen’s
various security forces polarized, serving the interests of competing power
centers rather than the state and doing little for the security of ordinary
Yemenis. And the provision of basic services, in a country facing increasing
violence and persistent poverty, only worsened.
“We should hide how we live,” said Moneef Almaqtari, 20,
as he walked home in the popular Belaily neighborhood of Sana, not far from
where Ms. Nasser draws her water. Mr. Almaqtari
ducked his head under the clotheslines strung outside his door, where a pair of
washed disposable baby diapers were hung.
“It is not a home, it’s a hut,” Mr. Almaqtari said as
he walked to the kitchen, where his sister was making flat bread on a gas stove.
He earns $200 a month as a supermarket cashier, he said, but his father and two
of his brothers are construction day laborers and they rarely get work these
days. All their earnings are pooled to buy food. “This is the only life I ever
knew,” he said, “but with every president, the crisis gets worse and we suffer
more.”
How much influence Mr. Saleh still wields is unclear, but the legacy of
his years in power and the fractured state he led is palpable in the attitudes
of Yemenis on the street.
“We never feel like the government is there, anyway,”
said Taghreed Abdul Wahab, 21, a student at Sana University who stood with a
group of classmates preparing for a geography test.
Their exams were postponed after the latest spate of violence, but they
complained more about persistent problems on campus like favoritism and corruption,
which they said are never addressed. “Students with lower grades can be
admitted to medicine over others because they’re from the right family or they
know the right people,” Ms. Abdul Wahab said.
Belal Hussein, 25, a graduate with a business degree who supervised an
exam earlier in the day, overheard the conversation. Mr. Hussein introduced
himself as a government employee who has not been paid his salary in seven
months.
“They keep saying they have no revenues,” he said.
Mr. Hussein’s job is to keep track of employee attendance at the
Commission for Public Lands, a body that manages state property. He admitted
that he accepted bribes to mark colleagues present who had missed work because
they had second jobs.
“How else am I supposed to live?” Mr. Hussein asked.
Yemenis refer offhandedly to the revolution set off in 2011, when the
Arab Spring began, and its aftershocks as “the crisis.” The instability it
brought allowed the Houthis to sweep into the capital, driving out the old
leadership and promising reform. But many Yemenis have reason to be skeptical.
Back in Al Belaily, Mr. Nasser waited for lunch to be served.
“So far, the Houthis haven’t done much for us,” he said
as his children gathered for the meal. He looked at the basic food spread on
the floor. “On Fridays,” he said, a little embarrassed, “we also eat chicken.”
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.Shuaib Almosawa contributed reporting
==================.
Photo Comment:
The Houthi rebels who now control Yemen announced
plans Friday for a council to replace Parliament and choose a committee to
select a new president.
