Geneva – SAM for Rights and Liberties is deeply concerned about the continued and escalating arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, and torture in areas under Houthi control, carried out under various political, security, and sectarian pretexts. The international community’s silence and inability to prevent these practices or protect victims is particularly alarming.
This policy has become a tool to subjugate society and silence voices. Prisons and detention centers in Yemen have become symbols of fear and suppression, instruments to impose a reality of oppression and collective punishment. Many free citizens—including politicians, journalists, academics, human rights defenders, and students—are imprisoned, deprived of liberty, and held incommunicado for years.
The tragedy extends beyond the victims. Each detainee leaves behind a family enduring silent suffering: a mother waiting for a call that never comes, a spouse torn between fear and hope, and children growing up amidst absence and deprivation. Detention in Yemen has become a sentence for entire families, with pain that ripples across society, feeding feelings of helplessness and despair. Silence in the face of this injustice only strengthens oppression, allowing perpetrators to continue unchecked. True justice and healing require a unified stand in defense of Yemeni dignity and rights.
SAM emphasizes that so-called trials conducted in Houthi-controlled areas are mere show trials, designed to lend false legitimacy to violations. Death and prison sentences are issued against civilians in closed sessions, without lawyers or respect for basic guarantees of justice, in clear violation of the Yemeni Constitution and international humanitarian law.
Torture in detention has become systematic, carried out under the supervision of overreaching security agencies that monitor citizens’ movements and intercept communications. Detainees are subjected to beatings, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation, and continuous psychological humiliation aimed at destroying their humanity and breaking their will. The impact of torture does not end with release; it leaves lasting physical and psychological scars on both individuals and the collective conscience of the nation.
Given this grim reality, SAM asserts that silence is no longer acceptable. This issue must move from a limited human rights file to a national cause, with every free Yemeni standing against it, beyond divisions or narrow interests.
Accordingly, SAM calls for the formation of a “National Front Against Detention, Disappearance, and Torture”, bringing together sheikhs, scholars, academics, human rights defenders, journalists, writers, politicians, business leaders, ambassadors, and civil society representatives. The Front’s objectives include:
Immediate release of all arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared persons across Yemen without exception.
Issuing a “Yemen Declaration Against Detention and Disappearance” as a national document condemning these crimes and demanding their immediate cessation.
Organizing nationwide public events in villages and cities—a national day to condemn arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and torture.
Supporting legal, human rights, and media efforts to document crimes and hold perpetrators accountable locally and internationally.
Raising public awareness of the dangers of silence and reaffirming that freedom and dignity are the foundation of any national project or future reconciliation.
SAM also calls on the legitimate Yemeni government and all political and military actors to speedily release all detainees held for political, ideological, or regional reasons and take serious steps to close this painful chapter, ending political detention in Yemen’s recent history.
Finally, SAM extends a hand to all human rights, civil, political, and media organizations to ensure the success of this initiative. Urgent collective action is needed to end this ongoing tragedy, as statements alone are no longer sufficient, and merely discussing violations in the media without concrete action risks normalizing impunity and failing victims.