Houthis are Creating a Fuel Crisis to Extort Legitimacy

The Houthi militia, Iran’s arm in Yemen, is not satisfied with killing, kidnapping, enforced disappearance, torture and oppression against Yemenis. Rather, it resorts to investing in the suffering of the people, by fabricating stifling crises in basic commodities and products, with the aim of gaining wealth from trafficking in the black market on the one hand, and extorting legitimacy and the international community on the other hand.

The coup militia continues to turn the lives of Yemenis into an unbearable hell. They try to fabricate a fuel crisis in the capital, Sanaa and the rest of its areas of control. They always repeat popular accusations to the terrorist organization of being behind the renewal of the crisis, in an effort to strengthen the black market and pressure the legitimate government to continue plundering the revenues of Hodeidah port.

Sources and eyewitnesses, according to Al Sahwa newspaper, confirmed that most of the petrol stations in the capital, Sana’a, were closed to citizens a few days ago, based on instructions received by station owners from Houthi leaders. The sudden closure of the stations caused a suffocating fuel crisis that exacerbated the living, human and health suffering of the population in the militia-controlled areas.

Residents in different areas of Sana’a talked about the group’s hiding of large quantities of oil derivatives in secret warehouses, in order to trade in fuel and sell it at high prices on the black market. They stressed that the return of the black market spread in an unprecedented way in the regions and neighborhoods of Sanaa, where hundreds of cars and buses were seen in abundance on the Sideways and streets to sell oil derivatives at record prices.

In light of this crisis, residents reported that the price of a 20-liter canister of gasoline reached 14,000 riyals, while queues of cars were interconnected in front of official gas stations. They hope that the coup militia would allow them to obtain their needs, while the black market witnessed the sale of fuel run by influential Houthi leaders Sana’a has a great boom.

Local observers have linked the Houthi militia’s resumption of a new fuel crisis and its efforts to return again to smuggling Iranian fuel to the port of Hodeidah, and then using its revenues to kill Yemenis.

The popular movement condemns the terrorist crimes of the Houthi militia, the massacres and genocide in Hima Taiz, the Association of the Abductees’ Mothers in Taiz, they aim to carry out a protest stand to denounce the arrests campaign carried out by the Houthi group against the people of the Al-Hima area, north of the governorate.

The protesters at the stand raised banners calling for an end to the kidnappings and the release of all the kidnapped. The League condemned the kidnappings of 95 men and more than 11 children, and condemned the storming of homes in the Al-Hima area, holding the Houthi coup militia fully responsible for the safety of the kidnapped and the psychological consequences that befall them. The League called on the UN Security Council, the United Nations and human rights organizations to put pressure on the Houthis to release all the abductees and return them to their families, so that security and peace can be achieved for these families.