Fri, Dec 23, 2022 page6

• Yemeni women chafe under tightening Houthi rule

  • AFP, DUBAI, United Arab Emirates
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  Yemeni student Abir al-Maqtari dreamt of studying abroad, but amid tightening restrictions on women echoing religious regimes in Iran and Afghanistan, Houthi forces blocked her from leaving.

  The Iran-backed Houthis, who have controlled swathes of the Arab world’s poorest country since seizing the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, in 2014, have increasingly enforced travel restrictions on women over the past eight months, residents and rights advocates say.

  Al-Maqtari, 21, from Yemen’s southwestern city of Taez, was ready to study in Egypt, but she was barred from leaving Sana’a International Airport without a male guardian.

  

  A woman shops at a market in Taez, Yemen, on Thursday last week.

  Photo: AFP

  “I got a scholarship in Cairo, but the Houthis didn’t let me travel through [Sana’a] airport,” she said. “I then thought I could try to travel via the airport in [Yemeni government-held] Aden, but the Houthis also stopped me from reaching it.”

  Yemeni society, although deeply conservative, has traditionally allowed space for individual freedoms.

  However, this is changing under the Houthi movement, which was founded with the aim of pushing for a theocracy.

  

  Children play soccer on a street in Sana’a on Dec. 3.

  Photo: EPA-EFE

  The Houthis have in the past few months clamped down on women traveling without a male guardian of relative — even within the country. Women in the rebels’ northwestern stronghold of Saada are denied contraception if they do not have a prescription and their husband is not present.

  In Saada and some small towns, women cannot travel alone after dark, even for medical emergencies, while an all-female police force enforces discipline.

  However, there are numerous examples of women complaining and pushing back, especially in the big cities.

  “As a Yemeni woman, I feel that all my rights and my freedoms are being stolen from me,” al-Maqtari said.

  The Houthis, from Yemen’s mountainous north, belong to the Zaidi minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that makes up more than one-third of the fractured country’s Sunni-majority population.

  The movement emerged in the 1990s, rising up over alleged neglect of their region.

  It has been fighting a pro-government coalition led by Saudi Arabia since 2015, a conflict that has left hundreds of thousands dead and millions on the brink of famine.

  Restrictions on female freedoms, which parallel decrees issued by the Taliban in Afghanistan, are not part of Yemeni law and are enforced arbitrarily through rebel directives.

  Radhya al-Mutawakel, cofounder of Yemeni rights group Mwatana, said the travel restrictions set a “very dangerous” precedent and disproportionately affect women who have jobs.

  “This is the first time that a decision limiting the freedom of movement of women has come from an official authority,” al-Mutawakel said.

  Bilqees al-Lahbi, a gender consultant at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies think tank, said the restrictions are aimed at satisfying the most extreme branch of the Houthi movement and exerting political control.

  “They are inspired by both the Iranian model and that of the Taliban to silence all opposition and subjugate society,” she said.

  In major cities, residents are resisting “attempts to Talibanize society,” al-Mutawakel said, highlighting Sanaa’s younger and more defiant population.

  Aicha Ahmed was forced to close her beauty salon and gym in Sana’a for months after the Houthis shut down swimming pools, fitness facilities and other businesses catering exclusively to women over the summer.

  After repeated complaints and lobbying on social media, she was permitted to reopen her salon, but not the gym.

  “Eight employees lost their jobs,” she said.

  In the western city of Hodeida, also under Houthi control, the owner of a cafe for women had to fight to stay in business.

  “We told them that we were ready to respect all their conditions,” the 38-year-old said, requesting anonymity over security concerns.

  In Sana’a, an outcry over prohibitions on men and women mixing at graduation ceremonies and in restaurants, as well as a ban on music during certain events, has forced the authorities to backtrack.

  “But it’s a long-term battle,” al-Mutawakel said. “We don’t know who will win ... because in the end, the population is exhausted.”
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