Yemen 2016 Human Rights Report
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YEMEN 2016 HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Yemen is a republic with a constitution that provides for a president, a parliament, and an independent judiciary. Former president Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down in 2012 when voters elected Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, the sole consensus candidate, as president in a vote generally considered free and fair. The transitional government sought to expand political participation to excluded groups, including women, youth, and minorities. Progress ended in 2014, when Houthi rebels allied with forces loyal to former president Saleh (Houthi-Saleh rebels), staged an armed takeover against the government, precipitating its exile. The Houthis, in cooperation with Saleh’s political party, the General People’s Congress (GPC), then proceeded to take over many government functions and institutions in Sana’a. In August they announced the formation of a “Supreme Political Council,” followed by the formation of a “National Salvation Government” in November. Neither body was recognized by the international community. Civilian authorities did not maintain effective control over security forces. The government exercised limited control over military and security forces due to Houthi-Saleh rebel control over most of the security apparatus and state institutions. Competing family, tribal, party, and sectarian influences also reduced government authority. The conflict between Houthi-Saleh rebels and forces loyal to the internationally recognized Hadi-led government continued throughout the year. Saudi Arabia and a coalition of other states continued air and ground operations against the Houthi- Saleh rebels. A UN-led peace process involving the government, the Houthis, and Saleh’s GPC did not produce a peace agreement or a sustained cessation of hostilities. As of November the Hadi-led government had re-established a steady presence in Aden as well as an intermittent presence in some other governorates but had not returned to the capital Sana’a and remained unable to re-establish fully the rule of law in the territory it holds. The most significant human rights problems were violence committed by various groups, weak and failing state institutions that allowed widespread disregard for the rule of law, and the inability of citizens to choose their government through free and fair elections. YEMEN 2 Other human rights abuses included killings, disappearances, kidnappings, and reports of the use of excessive force and torture by security forces and various militant groups; cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; poor prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lengthy pretrial detentions; infringements on citizens’ privacy rights; limits on freedom of expression, press, assembly, association, and movement; limits on freedom of religion, particularly for members of the Bahai community; lack of government transparency; corruption; violence and discrimination against women, children, persons with disabilities, and minorities; use of child soldiers; restrictions on worker rights; and trafficking in persons, including forced labor. Impunity was persistent and pervasive. Houthi-Saleh influence over government institutions severely reduced the government’s capacity to conduct investigations. Nonstate actors committed significant abuses while engaged in internal armed conflict, including: Houthi-Saleh rebels; tribal militias; resistance forces; militant secessionist elements; al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP); and a local branch of Da’esh. Few actions led to prosecutions. Saudi-led coalition airstrikes resulted at times in high numbers of civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure, including hospitals. The Saudi-led coalition’s Joint Incident Assessment Team (JIAT) investigated some incidents, although its reports did not lead to prosecutions. Government and Saudi-led coalition delays or denials of permits for commercial and aid shipments bound for rebel-held ports, as well as Houthi rebels’ disruptions of aid delivery, exacerbated the humanitarian situation; a reported 69 percent of the population required some form of humanitarian assistance as of November. Section 1. Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom from: a. Arbitrary Deprivation of Life and other Unlawful or Politically Motivated Killings There were numerous unconfirmed reports that current or former members of the security forces committed arbitrary or unlawful killings. Politically motivated killings by nonstate actors, including Houthi-Saleh rebel forces and terrorist and insurgent groups claiming affiliation with AQAP or Da’esh, increased significantly during the year (see section 1.g.). According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), in midyear men in civilian clothes took a doctoral student in Sana’a to a nearby Houthi-controlled police station. In Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2016 United States Department of State • Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor YEMEN 3 August relatives of the student were told he had been killed. After seeing the body in the morgue, a family member claimed that it showed signs of torture, including burn marks. In an August report, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) claimed that AQAP, Da’esh, and affiliated militants often targeted members of security forces, judicial authorities, and civilians. The OHCHR documented 27 killings in Aden in January, most of which were perpetrated by unknown armed groups or militants affiliated with AQAP or Da’esh. In January media outlets reported that AQAP publicly stoned a woman to death in Mukalla after accusing her of adultery and prostitution. On March 4, unknown militants killed 16 civilians in a senior citizens’ home run by Christian nuns in the Sheikh Othman area of Aden, according to media reports. Da’esh claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on Houthi-affiliated Shia mosques. In June Da’esh killed at least 42 persons, mostly soldiers and one child, and injured five civilians with four suicide car bombings at security targets in Hadramawt Province, media reported. b. Disappearance During the year there were reports of politically motivated disappearances and kidnappings of individuals associated with political parties, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and media outlets critical of various security forces within the government and critical of the Houthi movement (see section 1.g.). Houthi- Saleh rebels and their allies sometimes detained civilian family members of government security officials. Nonstate actors targeted foreigners, including those believed to be working for foreign diplomatic missions. Abductions were difficult for foreign entities to verify unless they involved a foreigner or government official. Many unofficial groups abducted persons to achieve specific goals. The local Mwatana Organization for Human Rights reported in May that Houthi authorities carried out 26 cases of enforced disappearance. In December 2015 unidentified gunmen kidnapped a Tunisian woman, Nourane Hawas, in Sana’a while she was working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Hawas was released on October 3. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2016 United States Department of State • Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor YEMEN 4 On September 20, Houthi rebels abducted an American teacher from an English- language school in Sana’a, media reported. He was released on October 15. On October 21, media outlets reported that an Australian soccer coach working in Sana’a appeared in a video claiming to have been kidnapped by an unnamed group. c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment The constitution prohibits torture and other such abuses. Although the law lacks a comprehensive definition of torture, there are provisions allowing prison terms of up to 10 years for acts of torture. There were reports of torture committed by various groups during the year. Torture and other forms of mistreatment were common in Houthi-Saleh detention facilities and by Houthi-Saleh rebels in informal facilities, according to the government’s National Commission to Investigate Alleged Violations to Human Rights (NCIAVHR), based in Aden. The government established the NCIAVHR in September 2015, and its membership includes judges and legal and other human rights experts. The commission stated in its August report that it had received reports of 132 cases of torture during the year. In November HRW documented 11 cases of alleged torture and other mistreatment, including the abuse of a child, by Houthi-Saleh rebels in Sana’a. The OHCHR reported that, during their visit to the Houthi rebel-affiliated Popular Committee-controlled Women’s Central Prison in Sana’a in February, four women detainees claimed they had been blindfolded during their capture and taken to an unidentified location, where they were subjected to electric shocks and accused of being prostitutes. During the year Houthi-Saleh rebels arrested and detained a 17-year-old high school student, who claimed to have been beaten and threatened while being interrogated for hours about his family’s links to opposition parties. According to HRW, he was released after a month. HRW reported that in August 2015 Houthi-Saleh rebels arrested and detained Abd al-Kader al-Guneid, a medical doctor and human rights activist. While detained, al-Guneid examined and treated other detainees with injuries he suspected were the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2016 United States Department of State