DUBAI,
United Arab Emirates —
Her voice shaking, 26-year-old Balqees recounts her ordeal at a Huthi rebel
checkpoint in northern
Yemen, where experts say repression of women is rampant
after years of civil war.
اضافة اعلان
“There is no limit to their shame,” she
said, asking to use a pseudonym for fear of reprisal.
The
Huthis, from the Zaidi Shiite sect of
Islam, whose traditional stronghold is Yemen’s mountainous north, control the
capital Sanaa as well as swathes of the country.
Yemen has long been a deeply conservative
society, but the Iran-backed Huthis are enforcing their austere brand of Islam
with an iron fist, witnesses say.
It is rare for women to speak out, but
Balqees described how a Huthi official stopped her at a checkpoint leaving
Sanaa when traveling by bus with female friends.
All were aged over 20 but Balqees said he
referred to them as “minors”.
“He was asking us questions and yelling,”
she said. “He accused us of violating public morality.”
Balqees said they were dressed in modest
clothes, but not the plain black flowing robes and face veil women have
traditionally worn in Sanaa for decades, and which the Huthis prefer.
“He had a problem with the way we were
dressed,” she said, complaining their clothes were too colorful.
Violations of women’s rights in
Huthi-controlled areas grew “more acute” last year, according to Yemeni
non-governmental organization Mwatana for Human Rights.
The clampdown on freedoms includes
prohibiting the use of contraception and restricting women’s right to work, it
said.
“The situation is bad for women all over the
country, but it is worse in the areas under Huthi control,” Mwatana’s Noria Sultan
told AFP.
‘Imprison
and humiliate’
One
resident in Sanaa, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said rebels used
the smallest apparent infringement of their rules as an excuse to “beat,
imprison and humiliate women”.
In Balqees’s case, rebel officials also
objected to the women traveling without a male guardian — which, although not
law in Yemen, is demanded by
Huthi forces. “It used to be normal for women to
travel,” she said.
When Balqees said she planned to cross the
front lines to travel to the government-controlled southern port of Aden,
things turned worse.
“He said, ‘God willing, you’ll be going to
hell’,” she said.
Huthi forces seized their identification
papers and ordered them back to Sanaa.
“I felt like I was being interrogated like a
criminal,” she said, adding the soldiers were staring and leering at them in an
unpleasant manner.
“If there were proper institutions, we could
have insisted on our rights, but there’s no one to complain to,” she added.
“It’s humiliating.”
Yemen’s grinding civil war, which erupted in
2014 after the Huthis captured Sanaa, pits the rebels against the
internationally recognized government, which is supported by a Saudi-led
military coalition.
Hundreds of thousands of people have died as
a direct or indirect consequence, and millions have been displaced, triggering
what the United Nations calls the world’s worst
humanitarian crisis.
The Huthi authorities declined to respond to AFP
requests for comment.
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