2022.. a year of Houthi abuse and terrorism in Hodeidah

English - Saturday 21 January 2023 الساعة 03:24 pm
Al-Khawkha, NewsYemen, Hadeel Muhammad:

The terrorist Houthi militia - Iran's arm in Yemen - intensified its attacks and crimes against citizens in the areas under its control in Al-Hodeidah Governorate, during the past year 2022, and the people of the coastal governorate suffered all kinds of tragedies and woes.

 The Iranian arm has been waging an open war against the people of Tihama, since its control of Hodeidah in October 2014, and the residents of the unliberated areas of the peaceful province are suffering from difficult living conditions, and are struggling to obtain a living to feed their families, after the coup militia stopped paying the salaries of employees, doubled the levies and fought the citizens for their livelihood

During the past year, the criminal militia continued its attacks against citizens in Al-Hodeidah Governorate, and continued to plunder lands and property, doubled levies, looted aid, restricted freedoms, seized revenues from Al-Hodeidah ports, led children to death fronts, and paraded its forces and weapons above the suffering and tragedies of citizens.

Port exploitation

 Iran's arm in Yemen continued to exploit the ports of Hodeidah and Salif and plunder their revenues during 2022, and refused to supply oil derivatives revenues to the Central Bank branch to pay employees' salaries, after allowing the entry of oil derivatives ships, according to the UN armistice agreement.

Informed sources indicated that the terrorist militia plundered approximately 380 billion riyals within just two months of the armistice, from selling about 630,000 tons of Iranian oil derivatives granted to the militia, at 600 riyals, the value of one liter.

According to the data of the United Nations Verification and Inspection Mechanism in Yemen, the militia imported about 1.6 million tons of fuel, through the ports of Hodeidah and Salif, during the third quarter of 2022, an increase of 330 percent compared to the same period in 2021 when only 371 thousand tons were imported of fuel.

Activists from the people of Hodeidah considered that the billions looted by the Houthi militia from the governorate of Hodeidah, from the revenues of the ports, in addition to the revenues of taxes, customs and electricity bills with which the citizen is depleted, the militia feeds its fronts and its militants, and also blesses its leaders with the money looted from the stricken governorate.

Land plunder

 Last September, the Houthi militia launched a military campaign, reinforced with dozens of vehicles, gunmen and bulldozers, to confiscate thousands of hectares of citizens' lands in the districts of Al-Hodeidah Governorate.  It began with the northern districts and extended east to the districts of Al-Marawa’a, Bajil, and Al-Hujaila, then headed south to the districts of Al-Tuhayta and Bayt Al-Faqih, with the aim of seizing fertile and vast agricultural lands, claiming that they belong to the endowments.

An armed campaign consisting of dozens of crews, belonging to the Houthi Special Committee for what was called "Awqaf Lands" headed by the Houthi leader Abu Haider Jahaf, stormed the villages of "Al-Qasra" isolation of the Directorate of Beit Al-Faqih, south of Hodeidah, to confiscate vast lands that are a source of livelihood for the population, with an area of more than 10 km.  More than five thousand people of the region benefit from it, and it is a pasture for hundreds of years, as the militia fired live bullets at the citizens, causing dozens of deaths and injuries among the people of the targeted villages, including women and children.

 The armed looting gangs coming from the governorates of Saada, Hajjah and Amran, which follow leaders in the militia, continued their operations to plunder the agricultural lands of the people of Tihama by force of arms, and to use the militia’s judiciary to enable them to own the lands of citizens, and to seize large areas of agricultural land, to establish private farms and expel owners of the land and turn some of them into workers in the lands they owned.

Last December, a video clip showed that an armed Houthi gang of land looters opened fire on citizens in the Bajel district, east of Hodeidah, while they were confronting an attempt to plunder the tribe's common lands by force of arms, which resulted in the death of two citizens and the wounding of 3 others, all of them from the "Al-Abaqa" tribe.  

The Houthi militia pushed many armed gangs to spread over agricultural lands in Al-Hodeidah Governorate, taking advantage of its full control over those areas, to loot citizens' property under several names.

Exploitation of children

 Despite the international armistice and the cessation of fighting during the past year, the terrorist militia has intensified its compulsory recruitment campaigns in the areas under its control in Al-Hodeidah Governorate to mobilize more fighters for its fronts, as the militia is on high alert to search for fighters.

 Informed sources indicated that the Houthi leaders, Abu Faris Arik and Abu Faisal Jaashi, are recruiting children from the Al-Mahjar region and the suburbs of southern Al-Hodeidah for twenty thousand riyals for each child, in a cheap exploitation of poverty and the difficult conditions they are going through.

The sources accused the preventive supervisor at the Al-Ra'ini Police Station in the city of Hodeidah, Hassan Ahmed Al-Jediri (Abu Ali), of being one of the Houthi leaders responsible for the sexual exploitation of children with the participation of some Houthi leaders, in addition to arresting young men and forcing them into the fighting fronts.

Electricity trade

 While the majority of the residents of Hodeidah suffer during the summer from hell of heat due to the power outages for long hours, and their inability to subscribe to the commercial electric stations of the Houthi leaders, most of whom are from Saada, the militia leaders in Hodeidah live in the bliss of air conditioning in the villas that they looted, enjoying free government electricity  At a time when they reap billions from the revenues of commercial stations, through which they embezzle the pockets of citizens after depriving them of the state’s electricity, which the value of kilowatts for subscribers is 250 riyals, while the militia leaders sell kilowatts in their commercial stations for double.

During the months of November and December, many technical committees were sent to Hodeidah, sent by the militia-affiliated Electricity Corporation in Sana'a.  It carried out campaigns of incursions and arrests in all neighborhoods of the city of Hodeidah to disconnect the electric current from hundreds of citizens, and arrested them on charges of stealing "lost electricity" after the terrorist militia took the pretext of the lost electricity as a means to loot citizens and push them to subscribe to Houthi commercial stations.

 A document from the Central Bank branch in Hodeidah showed that the Houthi militia disbursed 24 million riyals to technicians and administrative staff, who numbered more than 200 employees, as operating expenses under allegations of searching for losses from the electricity current for the residents of the city of Hodeidah, while the total that was spent to technicians and central and local officials amounted to about 90 million riyals from the revenues of the local authority of the coastal governorate run by the Houthi leaders.

Local sources confirm that what was disbursed to the waste committees exceeds 200 million riyals, noting that the coup militia deliberately neglects government electricity in favor of its influential merchants to enable them to build their wealth at the expense of the suffering of the population.

 The militia leaders in Hodeidah collect 30 to 40 million riyals daily from ships entering through the ports, in exchange for supporting what they called the Hodeidah Electricity Subsidy Fund, which was established by the militia in 2017. It imposed 5 riyals on each parcel that entered the port, and 8 riyals on every liter of fuel that entered through the ports of the province, where the militia gets about 7 billion riyals annually, while Al-Hodeidah and its people live in suffering, death and pain.