Yemen's Houthis, Equal-Opportunity Persecutors

Christmas Eve, Houthi style

The campaign began in late November 2025. Seven Yemeni Christians were detained in early December, then the Houthis widened the sweep on December 24. Christmas Eve, of all nights. By January 12, Human Rights Watch had counted more than 20 Christians detained in Sanaa, Ibb and other Houthi-held provinces; the National Council for Minorities in Yemen speaks of dozens.

The method never varies: no warrant, no identification, doors broken down, people seized at home or in the street, and no reason given. Most families get no news, including those of detainees with heart disease or diabetes. Under international law, this has a name: enforced disappearance.

Fifty, and counting

The count has kept growing. Rights groups and local sources cited by the Irish charity Church in Chains report more than fifty Christians detained over the winter, and Open Doors says three church leaders were arrested on April 11 and 12. Exact figures are impossible to verify. What is known: Yemen's Christian community, once estimated at 41,000, has shrunk to a few thousand, most of them converts from Islam worshipping in secret, in a country where leaving Islam is legally a capital offence.

"When someone is taken, they could vanish for months."— A Yemeni Christian, quoted by Church in Chains

Even aid has a religion test. In 2025, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom reported that the Houthis discriminated against Christians and Baha'is in distributing aid, and that Houthi hospitals refused to treat Christians in several cases.

Mosques into barracks

Christians are not alone. Human Rights Watch documented the enforced disappearance of 17 Baha'is in 2023, after years of systematic arrests, and Yemen's tiny Jewish community has long been persecuted. In August, the Yemeni Women Empowerment Foundation went further. Its report, carried by the Aden-based Saba news agency, lists 4,651 Houthi violations against mosques, clerics and religious minorities in 14 provinces since 2014: 311 people killed, 679 abducted or detained, 143 tortured, 13 of whom died. Add 938 imams and preachers forcibly replaced, 491 mosques converted into barracks, 114 into operations rooms, 902 attacked or desecrated and 832 mosque libraries confiscated.

The report reaches us through the news agency of the government at war with the Houthis, hardly a neutral referee. Still, for a movement whose slogan promises death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews and victory to Islam, turning nearly 500 mosques into barracks is an original way to celebrate.

Champions of justice, abroad

The Houthis like to present themselves as champions of justice against Western oppression. At home, they have spent the past year and a half arresting hundreds of people, from UN staff and journalists to human rights defenders, while Yemenis face alarming levels of hunger. Human Rights Watch researcher Niku Jafarnia sums it up:

"Those who oppose injustice abroad should not be carrying out injustice at home."

In Houthi Yemen, the only thing handed out without religious discrimination is the arrest. The warrant, they don't even bother to show.