In mid-2014, the Ansar Allah group (Houthis) launched an extensive media campaign against the Basindwa government on the ground of raising oil prices, and demanded a public revolution against the government, inciting its overthrow through slogans, banners, and resonant speeches by the group’s leader. However, a few years after its coup against the state and assuming power, hunger turned into a virtue. The group removed Abu Dharr Al-Ghafari’s slogans protesting hunger from the walls of the capital, and replaced them with religious mottos which praise patience, asceticism, and poverty. The spread of these types of slogans gradually increased, coinciding with the continued suspension of public employees' salary and the intensification in the number of street beggars.

The visual implications of the catchwords on the city walls reveal the reality of daily life in Sana'a. The cityscape is shaped by the visual paradoxes of political discourse as the transformation in the Houthi speech can be monitored by a simple comparison between the slogans it launched in 2014 against the state, such as: “I am amazed at the one who does not find food for his day, how he does not go out brandishing his sword on people ,” while in the year 2019 the group’s mottos changed to: “There is no good in whoever looks for bread and gas whereas he fails to join the battel fronts of honor, pride and dignity.”

The specter of hunger

In recent years, "hunger" has become a new taboo that is forbidden to be talked about or publically discussed in Sana'a. It is noteworthy that the "Houthi" authority initially tolerated the shift in tone of YouTuber: Mustafa Al-Mumari in his criticism of corruption in the Public Prosecution and the Judiciary, but they arrested him after he said in audio and video: “People are starved in Sanaa,” without taking into account the media mobilization that Al-Mumari carried out on behalf of the group since the beginning of the war, especially with the intensification of battles on the Marib front, and his adoption of the group’s racist rhetoric towards women in particular.

The detention campaign against Al-Mumari coincided with arresting number of his fellow activists on YouTube, such as: Ahmed Hajar, Ahmed Allaw, and Hammoud Al-Mesbahi, against the backdrop of their criticism of corruption and hunger. The Houthis fabricated charges against Al Mumari and his colleagues among those accusations were that they broadcast false news, information, and rumors, inciting people to chaos, demonstrating in the streets, civil disobedience, and storming government buildings. They were also tried in absentia.

At the end of last year, activist Hamdi Al-Mukahal published a number of videos denouncing the systematic starvation practiced by the Ansar Allah (Houthis) authority. Using the same rhetoric that the Houthi group used against the state in 2014. However, within days he was found murdered, which sparked popular anger in a popular march that held his funeral and chanted for the overthrow of Houthi. The Houthi authority in Ibb officially announced his suicide without investigating the circumstances of the murder up to date.

Over the years, humanitarian organizations have tended to portray the war in Yemen as a humanitarian disaster, or as the worst global food crisis, which is the result of the United Nations separating the political file from the economic file by continuing to provide humanitarian aid to Yemen, while not caring about the precondition of lifting the siege on the city of Taiz, ending forced detentions and other various violations, including starvation.

‍

With the perpetuation of the starvation policy, people began flocking to centers for distributing alms and zakat, but even the latter were prevented by the Houthis, as the General Authority for Zakat, affiliated with the group’s authority, imposed strict penalties on merchants and various charitable institutions and those who distribute zakat and any charitable aid. These penalties come in order for zakat funds to be collected from merchants and delivered to the Houthi Zakat Authority itself, and disbursed through it. The crime of "crowd stampede" of last April 20 in Sana'a, in which at least 85 Yemenis were smashed to death and more than 322 injured, comes with its mysterious circumstances, a blatant condemnation of the Houthis, even though the authorities turned the crime of starving people into a mere stampede incident.

Starvation and intimidation

With the expansion of the specter of hunger, the Yemeni Teachers Club, a national union representing all educators working in public education in Yemen, announced a comprehensive strike on July 20, in all areas controlled by Ansar Allah (Houthis) until the group responds to their demands on top of which the payment of the teachers' salaries. However, the group’s authority in Sana'a bared its fangs at those demanding the delivery of salaries and accused them of treason and subordination to the enemies of the homeland. Moreover, the Houthi authorities carried out widespread arrests of teachers and participants in the strike in many areas. Not only that, the detentions coincided with the escalation of a religious campaign, accusing those demanding salaries of their false faith. The Mufti of Yemen, head of the Association of Yemeni Scholars in Sana'a, said in his Friday sermon: “Those who talk about the paying the salaries are corrupting people’s faith, distorting people’s thoughts, and killing their assurance.”

In a related context, in a mosque sermon, one of the Houthi preachers accused those demanding their salaries of treason, triviality and corruption. This came in a video that sparked widespread controversy among thousands of followers and users of the social media networks in Yemen.

As the anniversary of the Prophet’s Mohammed birthday approaches, an occasion that witnesses the wasting of millions of the people’s money for the sake of celebration, journalist Mojali Al-Sammadi wrote a tweet in which he said: “My right and my salary comes before the Prophet; the Prophet does not need me, but I need my salary.” As a result of these tweets, he was severely beaten and assaulted by gunmen affiliated with the Ansar Allah (Houthi) authority. Despite the heinous crime, Hussein Al-Ezzi, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, published a tweet warning Al-Sammadi against tweeting about this issue again and the warned him of consequences of not deleting the previous tweet. 

Legitimizing hunger

Over the years, humanitarian organizations have tended to portray the war in Yemen as a humanitarian disaster, or as the worst global food crisis, which is the result of the United Nations separating the political file from the economic file by continuing to provide humanitarian aid to Yemen, while not caring about the precondition of lifting the siege on the city of Taiz, ending forced detentions and other various violations, including starvation.

Worse still, the official Houthi discourse deliberately conveys a different image of the situation in the cities under its control. On the one hand, its media outlets deny and promote to the world that they are agriculturally sufficient, even though it is a limited individual effort for some farmers, and on the other hand, its security services practice secrecy and suppress people from speaking or demanding their salaries. It seems that famine today is no longer a result of war, but rather has become a method of governance in Sana’a that is justified and legislated religiously and ideologically. As a result, they suppress everyone who objects or opposes the starvation policy.