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published photo, Getty Images
We begin a tour of the British Independent newspapers and a report by journalist Charlene Rodrigo accuses the Houthis of practicing “sexual violence against women and forcing them to work in prostitution”.
The report is about Yemeni model Intisar Al Hammadi, whose car was stopped last February, at a checkpoint northwest of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, on her way to participate in a photoshoot.
The newspaper said it did not know the exact reason for her arrest, but her lawyer, Khaled al-Kamal, claims the reason was that she was in a car with a man accused of drug trafficking and that she worked as a “model and actress.”
The lawyer dealt with Al Hammadi’s case ten days after his imprisonment. Al Hammadi confirmed the suicide attempt last week, according to the newspaper.
When a delegation of journalists, lawyers and magistrates visited Sana’a central prison last month, Al Hammadi told them, according to The Independent, that she was “accused of drug trafficking and prostitution without any evidence. “. Weeks later, she was “threatened with a virginity test, which authorities later canceled.”
The Independent, the Geneva-based organization SAM for rights and freedoms, reportedly said Al Hammadi told the visiting delegation that Houthi security officials took her and other girls away. , in several houses and “forced them to drink alcohol and sleep with people.” When the Houthis were confronted with prostitution charges, they replied, “It’s okay as long as he’s in the service of the country.
Khaled Al-Kamal told the newspaper that the procedures for his arrest “contradict the Yemeni constitution and the law”.
The Independent notes that Al Hammadi’s case is not unique, as Noura Al-Jarawi, chair of the Coalition of Women for Peace, said that between December 2017 and 2020, around 1,181 women were arrested.
He believes the actual number of women languishing in Houthi-run prisons is “much higher as there are secret and illegal sites which are often located in hard-to-reach areas.”
Al-Kamal confirmed to the newspaper that cases of forced kidnappings, torture and sexual violence against women have “increased since 2015,” and that he is defending others in ten cases similar to the one from Al-Hammadi.
Speaking to five survivors, lawyers and human rights activists, The Independent said it learned that sexual violence against women is “pervasive in Houthi-run detention sites in Yemen.”
“The Houthis did not distinguish between women between the ages of 13 and 55 in their efforts to silence dissent,” she added.
The newspaper pointed out that the Houthis “broke Sedika al-Hammadi’s basin and tortured another woman until she was paralyzed and passed out, and even married some of the girls in the group.”
“Women and their children have been raped in the custody of the Houthis,” Al-Jarawi told The Independent.
She added that the Houthis use coercion, blackmail and intimidation to trap women.
When Sonia Ali Ghobash, 31, refused to work in intelligence to help target figures outside Sana’a, particularly Mohammed bin Saeed al-Jaber, Saudi Arabian ambassador to Yemen, the Houthis did imprisoned, gave her electric shocks and cold water, then raped her, The Independent reported.
“They implanted pins and nails in my back and removed the toenails from my right foot,” says Ghobash.
Al-Jarawi told the newspaper that the Houthis “use rape as a purification and marriage of jihad – tactics similar to those adopted by al-Qaeda.”
In February of this year, the United States withdrew the designation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, which was imposed by President Donald Trump’s previous administration in January.
U.S. special envoy to Yemen Timothy Lenderking told a webinar last week that the United States recognizes the Houthis as a legitimate actor.
The newspaper says Lenderking’s comments infuriated al-Jaroui and the other survivors. “The Houthis are committing war crimes against Yemenis on a scale that is no different from al-Qaeda, ISIS, Taliban and others,” al-Jarawi said.
Hussein al-Bakhiti, a pro-Houthi political commentator, told The Independent that they don’t need to use prostitution to achieve their goals because “they have drones and ballistic missiles to attack all their enemies” .
The Houthis are asking the al-Hammadi family for money, according to the newspaper. Ghobash was released from prison after her family paid the Houthis nearly twenty million Yemeni riyals ($ 80,000), according to The Independent. Women from poor families have died in these sites.
Rising oil prices and disagreements OPEC Plus
published photo, Reuters
We turn to the Financial Times and an article by Energy Editor-in-Chief David Sheppard on the recent turmoil within the OPEC Plus group and rising oil prices.
The report speaks of crude prices rising to their highest level in at least three years, after the group failed to reach an agreement on increasing oil supplies.
Brent crude hit $ 77.84 per barrel on Tuesday, the highest level since 2018.
All members of the group agree on the need to increase oil production as demand begins to exceed supply.
But the United Arab Emirates, one of the most powerful members of the group after Saudi Arabia and Russia, opposed extending a deal first reached in April last year – when the Oil prices were in free fall – unless the group agreed to reconsider the way it calculates its production target.
The report states that the UAE has recently invested billions of dollars in increasing its production capacity.
Tensions are also growing between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as they increasingly see each other as rivals in the Gulf region, according to the Financial Times.
As for the future of oil prices, the newspaper said they had already jumped.
Without a deal, she said, the default option would be to leave production unchanged, meaning “a tighter oil market in the second half of this year with increased demand.”
Many banks, the newspaper said, expect prices to exceed $ 80 a barrel, more than 50% since January.
She notes that the great danger is that if this disagreement is not resolved, it will “undermine the cohesion of the group and lead producers to start ignoring production targets”.
In the worst case, this could lead, according to the Financial Times, to “a price war, as happened in March of last year when Saudi Arabia turned on the taps after a dispute with Russia. on how to respond to the emerging epidemic “.
But the newspaper says Saudi Arabia will likely prefer a higher price.
Analysts close to the kingdom told the newspaper that Riyadh wanted to encourage other producers to invest, fearing an impending supply shortage.
Saudi Arabia wants prices high enough to encourage investment, but not high enough to accelerate the adoption of renewables and the end of the oil age.
As for expectations that the high price of oil will encourage other producers to increase their production, the newspaper said: “Maybe, but not quickly.”
Oil majors such as BP and Royal Dutch Shell are “under pressure to reduce oil and gas production and increase investment in renewable energy,” according to the Financial Times.
The newspaper pointed out that investing in large, long-term projects – which may have an expected lifespan of 50 years – seems less viable when demand for oil is expected to peak over the next decade.
But the deadlock increases the risk of demand growing faster than supply before that moment is reached, especially since non-OPEC producers do not step in to fill the void.
Turning to the broader market, the Financial Times said that the return of inflation is a hot issue in 2021 and that rising oil prices are fueling those fears.
Gold, traditionally viewed as a hedge against inflation, rose 1% on Tuesday to $ 1,805.71 an ounce.
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