On the 17th of July, the students of the Faculty of Mass Communication at Sana'a University were surprised by the decision to separate the sexes—male and female—in the academic classrooms and allocate three study days for female students and three days for male students. This decision was met with discontent among students and activists on social media, as it is an unjustified racial segregation decision between the sexes and a clear abuse of the educational edifice and those in it. Later, the Dean of the Faculty of Mass Communication told a newspaper affiliated with the Ansar Allah group (Houthis), commenting on the decision, that it is only a step that he believes is important in order to confront the soft war, which is the same reason that the group uses to justify any intervention that violates the public and personal lives of women. While reports say that the rest of the faculties of Sana'a University will follow in the same direction.
However, the strange thing is that the decision was issued by the so-called "University Student Forum", which has great powers, allowing it to intervene in many matters that are not subject to its specialization, in violation of university laws and regulations.
History and Precedents for Restricting Society
The Ansar Allah group (Houthis), through the so-called "alumni club", had intervened in the graduation ceremonies of the university students by imposing some dictates and conditions that violated their dignity and rights, and then imposing racial segregation between the sexes at the graduation ceremonies, as well as interfering in the dress and forms of female graduates. Indeed, these regulations are completely aligned with the orientations of the ruling authority in Sana'a, which believes that it is facing a soft war, and therefore it is its responsibility and incumbent upon it to consolidate the faith culture by imposing its interventions on the personal freedoms and public life of the people.
In a related context, particularly about two years ago, some gunmen of the Ansar Allah group (Houthis) stood in separate places in Hael Street in the center of the capital, Sana'a, on a mission to monitor the women passing by in the street, where they stopped the women wearing abayas with cloth laces on the waist. Consequently, they confiscated those laces from the abayas shops and also stripped them from the waists of the girls in the streets; an incident that occurred days after issuing regulations to abayas sewing shops not to sell these laces. Subsequently, as a result of that, the gunmen burned the confiscated laces in the middle of the street, celebrating their achievement.
During the same time period, there were extensive campaigns in some neighborhoods of Sana'a targeting barbershops, dictating to their workers the style of shaving and haircuts that barbers should do. In other cases, some young men were stopped in the streets because of their haircuts, and then the gunmen re-cut their shaves according to what they thought was not contrary to their faith identity.
Furthermore, every time, the ruling authority in Sana'a fails to manage the state or face the political, economic, and social crises. Nevertheless, it intensifies its campaigns targeting the personal and public freedoms of the citizen, especially against women, who are the most vulnerable to these campaigns. The Houthi group believes that its interference in personal freedoms and public life is an act of faith that contributes to the protection of society.
"I was stopped and interrogated by some gunmen in one of Sanaa's gardens while I was accompanied by my husband. The gunmen asked for our IDs and marriage contract, but the contract was not with us at the time. So, the gunmen took each one of us to a side and interrogated each one separately."
Rude Harassment
Hanan Mohammed tells "Khuyut": "I was stopped and interrogated by some gunmen in one of Sanaa's gardens while I was accompanied by my husband. Then, the gunmen asked for our IDs and marriage contract; but the contract was not with us at the time. So, the gunmen took each one of us to a side and interrogated each one separately." She adds, "I felt terrified by the barbarity of the gunmen, their strange questions and inquiries, and their mistreatment of us. After about half an hour of strange investigations and interrogations, questioning our morals and intentions and the validity of our responses, we were expelled from the garden; since then, I have sworn never to go out to any garden again".
Further, it does not stop at gardens and parks; but rather, the authorities in Sana'a have issued regulations to all restaurants to prevent women from working in them in 2018. In addition to removing the barriers that used to cover the dining tables in the families’ section and contenting only with short pieces of cloth that barely cover anything, as well as checking the relationships of people who come to the restaurants with women and proving their relationships with them. Hence, this opened another door to the exploitation that takes place in those places.
On the other hand, the authority in Sana'a closed most cafes, clubs, and places where young people of both sexes gather, under the pretext of eliminating corruption and soft war, and preventing mixing. In addition to harassing university students for the same reason and preventing them from working with female students on their graduation projects or sitting with them.
In the same regard, the Ansar Allah group (Houthis) intensified its campaigns against women. The year 2021 was the peak of this harassment, especially against women who hold public positions in universities and the private sector or work in organizations and associations. It prevented them from traveling through Sana’a airport and other land ports except in the presence of a male guardian, known as Maharram( one of her close relatives). In parallel, during the same period, it carried out propaganda campaigns to defend the hijab, attacked those who do not wear it, and incited against women working in organizations and public places.
Reproduction of a Traditional Social System
Abdulbaqi Shamsan, a professor of political psychology at Sana’a University, believes that the Houthi authorities’ harassment of public and personal freedoms comes within their orientation as part of their drive to restore the traditional social system that had ended after the September 26 revolution of 1962, with the aim of dividing society into hierarchical categories and classes based on discrimination. Moreover, he also believes that the group seeks to dominate the society completely, and for its complete control over it, it seeks to restore this system based on inequality and discrimination. Likewise, Shamsan indicates in his interview with "Khuyut" that the group sees itself as the owner of the divine right to rule and that it has a mandate to do so. This allows it to intervene in all matters without objection. Besides that, the professor emphasizes that the interventions that occur in this regard between school students and young people, in the curriculum and media discourse, are the most important steps that establish this project, which may have negative effects over the coming years.
About The Other Side, the "Salafi " group
The situation in the areas under the control of the internationally recognized government is not much different from the situation in the areas controlled by the Ansar Allah group (Houthis). As there are groups and individuals belonging to extremist religious and tribal parts, and sometimes belonging to the authority there, that adopt a discourse of incitement and violate people’s privacy and public freedoms, while the authority’s apparatus provides them with cover through concealment and cooperates in controlling them despite the damage reaching many segments of society, especially in Taiz, after one of the religious sheikhs there took advantage of his place and the pulpit of the mosque to incite against personal and public freedoms and manifestations of people and life.
How do the authorities legalize these practices?
While Saeed Al-Qadasi was leaving his house with his wife in Sana'a, he heard someone calling him in a barbaric manner, saying to him, "Cover her," meaning that his wife, who was not wearing a niqab, should be covered with neqab. As a result, a verbal quarrel broke out between them. Al-Qadasi says in his interview with "Khuyut", that this behavior angered him a lot because the person interfered in something that did not concern him. In addition, he threatened to assault him and his wife if she did not wear the niqab. So, the problem would have grown at that time had it not been for people's intervention. On the other hand, he hesitated to report or file a lawsuit against him due to the authorities' tendency to follow the same orientation and his fear of being subjected to other abuses by the security authorities.
Recently, the social networking sites, streets, and even mosque pulpits have become platforms for attacking people's privacy and inciting against it, for reasons related to personal freedoms, especially those related to women and their dress and appearance, in calls that often take on a religious form and a tribal orientation most of the time.
In this context, Shamsan says: "No project can succeed if there is no incubator environment for it by society; in other words, spreading the ideas and beliefs that it wants and making society adopt them, which makes it easier for the authorities to destroy the values of equal citizenship, and bringing society into a major conflict within the framework of discrimination and interventions based on appearance, color, belief, and others.
On the other hand, specialists believe that the control of tribal and religious figures over the security and judicial institutions has created a kind of chaos and made the authorities adopt a discourse that undermines and affects people's freedom and privacy, which is the orientation sought by the authorities left by the war, currently and in the foreseeable future.
The need to implement the constitutional Articles
The lawyer, Abdulhakeem Al-Duba’i, says that the Yemeni constitution and law guarantee the protection of personal and public freedoms. Article "48" of the Yemeni constitution states: "The state guarantees citizens their personal freedom and preserves their dignity and security. The law specifies the cases in which the citizen’s freedom is restricted. It is not permissible to restrict the freedom of anyone except by a verdict from a competent court. Al-Duba’i indicated in his interview with "Khuyut" that the emergence of cases of interference and harassment affecting people's privacy by individuals or groups within the same society is a natural result of the de facto authorities' orientation, which tended to practices that described as illegal in restricting people's freedoms and privacy. Further, the law guarantees the practice and protection of personal freedoms, including freedom of movement, travel, work, gender equality, and non-discrimination. Al-Duba’i believes that there is a need to apply the law in this regard and not be lenient with these cases, because they may cause the spread of many crimes and violations. In addition to allowing religious and tribal extremist groups to commit numerous violations against citizens.
