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Houthis impose financial penalties for refusing conscription 

March 20, 2020 at 10:10 am

Houthis in Sana’a, Yemen. [Mohammed Hamoud/Anadolu Agency]

Yemen’s Houthi militia has introduced conscription to get new recruits in the Ibb governorate, where fighting on several fronts is being intensified. The southern province is under Houthi control.

According to Yemen Shabab.net, the Houthis have formed field committees to impose conscription on young men across the province.

“The militia has committed tribal leaders who are loyal to the Houthis to recruit at least two people from each village and push them to the front,” one source explained. “Financial penalties have been imposed on those who refuse to be recruited. This has already happened in Al-Qafr district.”

The source pointed out that Houthi leader Abdel Fattah Ghallab, who is from Al-Qafr, was appointed by the movement to collect such penalties from the people in the district. Each family, it is said, must pay 50,000 Yemeni riyals for every young man who does not go to the front in support of the “military effort”.

Dozens of Houthi fighters are reported to have been killed over the past weeks.

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