The Abductees’ Mothers Association is following with grave concern and deep fear the rapidly unfolding military developments and the expansion of fighting across several Yemeni governorates, and the potentially serious risks these developments pose to the lives and safety of abductees and forcibly disappeared persons being held in detention facilities.
The Association expresses deep concern over reports that abductees have been transferred from Al-Saleh Prison in Taiz governorate to other prisons in Dhamar and Sana’a amid escalating military confrontations. Such reports have heightened the fears of their families and raised serious questions about their fate, whereabouts and safety.
The Abductees’ Mothers Association stresses that these concerns are not new. Families continue to carry the painful memory of previous cases in which abductees lost their lives after being detained in military, civilian and academic facilities that were subsequently targeted and bombed, after the Houthi group had turned them into detention sites for abductees. This history now raises genuine fears that abductees and forcibly disappeared persons could be used as human shields or placed directly in the midst of military confrontations.
Reports of the Central Prison in Al-Jawf governorate being blown up have further intensified the anxiety and fear among the families of abductees and forcibly disappeared persons, who have already endured years of waiting, suffering and searching for any news that might reassure them about the fate of their loved ones.
Families had placed great hopes in the implementation of the latest agreement concerning the exchange and release of abductees. They had dreamed of the moment when they would finally reunite with loved ones after years of separation. Yet those hopes have begun to fade amid the latest developments, turning their anticipation of joyful reunions into the bitter fear of losing their loved ones forever.
The Abductees’ Mothers Association strongly condemns and denounces anything that could endanger the lives and safety of abductees and forcibly disappeared persons. It stresses that their continued detention and transfer between prisons and areas amid escalating military operations constitutes a grave threat to their lives and safety.
The Association emphasizes that the issue of abductees is purely humanitarian and must under no circumstances be turned into a political or military bargaining chip, nor should unarmed civilians be used as parties to or instruments in any conflict or confrontation.
The Abductees’ Mothers Association calls on all relevant parties, the international community, the United Nations, and human rights and humanitarian organizations to take urgent action and exert pressure to protect abductees and forcibly disappeared persons, ensure that they are not transferred to areas of active confrontation or that their detention facilities are not used for military purposes, and work seriously toward securing their release and disclosing the fate of those who have been forcibly disappeared.
The Association holds the Houthi group fully responsible for the lives and safety of all abductees and forcibly disappeared persons held in its custody, as well as for any danger or harm they may suffer as a result of their transfer, the use of their detention facilities, or their being placed in areas of military operations.
The abductees are not bargaining chips in the war, nor are they targets whose lives can be sacrificed. They are unarmed civilians with mothers, fathers, wives and children who have been waiting for their return for years.