UN demands Houthi insurgency to release Baha’i activists detained in capital

June 9 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The United Nations has demanded this Friday that the Huthi insurgency in Yemen immediately release the 16 activists of the Baha’i minority who have been detained and incommunicado since the end of last month and has demanded that their religious leaders refrain from fomenting hatred against this community, as a UN spokesman has accused the mufti of the capital, Sana’a, Shamsedin Sharafedin.

Last week, the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), specialized in monitoring the humanitarian situation around the world, accused the Huthi insurgency in Yemen of orchestrating the forced disappearance of 17 activists when they stormed a residence on May 25. Sanaa where they were meeting to elect, via videoconference with colleagues in the diaspora, their new “governing board”. Since then, only one of them, a woman, has been released.

The rest remain unaccounted for, as denounced this Friday by the spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jeremy Laurence, who has also taken the opportunity to ask the mufti of Sana to refrain from repeating speeches like the one last Friday, when he described the Baha’i minority as “traitors” who “should be killed if they do not repent” of their beliefs.

“Human Rights guarantee minorities the ability to profess their own religion, as well as the right to a fair trial before an impartial and independent court,” the spokesman said.

It should be remembered that the United Nations expert on freedom of religion or belief, Ahmed Shahid, has previously denounced what he described as a “persistent pattern of persecution” by the Houthis against the Baha’i population, especially since the insurgency became with control of the capital at the beginning of 2014, at the outbreak of a long civil war that has led Yemen to the most absolute catastrophe.

The movement’s leader, Abdel Malek al-Huthi, himself gave a speech in 2018 in which he described the Baha’is as “infidels” and “urged Yemenis to defend their country from the Baha’is and members of other religious minorities.”

HRW recalls that in 2016, the Houthi authorities raided a Baha’i educational conference in Sana’a and arrested more than 60 men, women and children. Later in 2018, they charged 24 people, at least 22 of them Baha’is, with espionage and apostasy in a Houthi-run court without due process. All cases remain active today. In 2020, they released six Baha’is who had been wrongfully detained for several years but were subsequently forced into exile.