Amb. Edmund Fitton-Brown
Senior Advisor, Counter Extremism Project (CEP)

On March 20, 2024, CEP hosted a webinar to present two new, in-depth reports concerning Houthi human rights abuses. 

The Houthis are currently claiming humanitarian motives, more specifically a desire to stop the fighting in Gaza, as the impetus behind their ongoing attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea. However, their own record of atrocious human rights abuses at home belies this claim. They have engaged in a concerted campaign to target vulnerable members of Yemeni society, including women, journalists and religious minorities, in order to force them to comply with the group’s radical ideology. The Houthis do so through a coordinated effort by their security services and the legal system which they coopted and dominate. These are responsible for detaining, torturing, unfairly trying, and then convicting individuals who have expressed perspectives which differ from those of Abdelmalek al-Houthi’s. 

These two new CEP reports which focus on Houthi oppression of women, journalists, and religious minorities document these abuses of vulnerable groups and identify the individuals or institutions that are responsible for or complicit in these excesses. Today, members of all three categories of vulnerable demographics remain imprisoned in Houthi jails where they are subject to relentless torture sessions. For example, the last Jew in Yemen, Libi Marhabi, has been unjustly imprisoned by the Houthis for the last 8 years and has been subjected to such brutal torture that he lost all of his teeth, is partially blind, has lost mobility, and is in failing health – at the age of 35. 

Nura al-Jarwi, who was herself a prisoner in Houthi jails, provided testimony based on her experience as a Houthi prisoner and spoke about the plight of women in Yemen who are subject to Houthi abuse.