The World Ignores Slavery in Yemen

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Due to their involvement in the current Gaza war, the Houthis of Yemen are on the front pages of newspapers and in television news broadcasts everywhere.

More formally known as Ansar Allah or Supporters of Allah, the Houthis are Zayidi Muslims associated with Shi’ite Islam, and live almost exclusively in Yemen. The movement is named after its first influential leader, Seyyed Badr al-Din al-Houthi, who claimed to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.

Zayidi Muslims make up only about 35 per cent of Yemen’s population; the rest are Sunni Muslims. Yet, despite their minority status, Zayidi Imams ruled Yemen for some 1,000 years.

Backed by Iran, the Houthis have been at war with a Saudi-led Suni Muslim coalition since 2015, a conflict which has led to the deaths of more than 350,000 people. Nine years on, the Houthis now basically control the country.

But what few people realize is their virtual enslavement of underprivileged Yemenis. According to a 2019 article in Asharq Al-Awsat, an Arabic international newspaper headquartered in London, “The Houthis are working tirelessly to restore slavery in Yemen, nearly 70 years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and decades after the 1962 revolution in Yemen.”

These people are known as “Al Akhdam,” the servants, though they prefer to be known as “Al Muhamasheen,” or the marginalized ones. They form a kind of hereditary caste at the very bottom of Yemen’s social ladder. They are reviled as outsiders, descendants of an Ethiopian army that is said to have crossed the Red Sea to oppress Yemen before the arrival of Islam.

For centuries, they have been excluded from mainstream society, and they continue to be subjected to severe forms of descent-based discrimination. Their living conditions are appalling. Today, the most common job for male Akhdam is street cleaning.

They also work as porters, foot soldiers and shoemakers. Women and children beg. Since there is no enforcement of legislation that criminalizes abuses against them, persecution, discrimination and exclusion go unpunished.

Reports of violence targeting them, including gender-based violence, have been rife. The fact they fall outside Yemen’s social structures means they have had little access to redress or mediation.

Their condition dates back to the pre-1962 rule by Zayidi Imams in Yemen and was used to classify the society into three sectors: Seyyeds, people with family connections to the Prophet Muhammad; other citizens; and, lastly, slaves.

But where Yemen’s other hereditary social classes, even the lower orders like butchers and ironworkers, slowly dissolved, the Akhdam retained their separate position.

So although they are Muslims, prejudice against them is based on their “lack of origin” compared to northern Arab Yemenis. Their debased status is a remnant of Yemen’s old social hierarchy, which collapsed after a 1962 revolution struck down the rule by Zayidi Imams.

The NGO Walk Free is an international human rights group focused on the eradication of modern slavery in all its forms. That includes forced labour, forced or servile marriage, debt bondage, forced commercial sexual exploitation, human trafficking, slavery-like practices, and the sale and exploitation of children. All involve the removal of a person’s freedom.

For over a decade, Walk Free has studied the number of people living in modern slavery around the world. They estimate that currently there are at least 85,000 victims of slavery in Yemen. They add “that due to the impossibility of conducting surveys under conflict, data likely underestimated the problem.”

A 2022 U.S. State Department “Trafficking in Persons Report” noted “vulnerable populations in Yemen were at an increased risk of human trafficking due to the protracted armed conflict, civil unrest, lawlessness, and worsening economic conditions.”

In an introduction to the report, then Secretary of State John Kerry, wrote: “Ending modern slavery must remain a foreign policy priority. Fighting this crime wherever it exists is in our national interest.”

The U.S. Department of Labour’s “Child Labor and Forced Labor Reports” for the same year found that children are particularly vulnerable to exploitation in slave-like conditions, and are subject to commercial sexual exploitation, human trafficking, and forced combat in armed conflict.

Houthis also subject Ethiopian women who try to cross into Saudi Arabia from Yemen to sexual slavery and abuses. A 2023 report by the Danish-based Mixed Migration Centre, a global network engaged in data collection, research, and analysis, found that large numbers of them are systematically being killed on the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia on a daily basis.

“Women are facing sexual violence and harassment by all parties on the ground,” according to Mwatana for Human Rights, a Yemeni NGO that documents atrocities in the country.

How do the Houthis rationalize this practice? They have come up with various ways to own slaves without violating Islamic rules, by bending definitions of slavery. Because the Akhdams were not originally Muslim, and converted only after becoming slaves, they argue that it is “legitimate” as it falls under this allowance.

They also extend slavery to children as the use of them as soldiers is permitted under certain circumstances under Islamic law – although it is widely considered a form of slavery in the modern world.

 

Hindu Nationalism Makes Gains in India

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

India’s ruling party won a resounding victory in regional elections last November, wresting control of key states away from its main opposition, in a major boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who looks set to win a third term in national elections scheduled for May.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh states from the Indian National Congress and registered a record fifth term in central Madhya Pradesh. More than 160 million people, one-sixth of India's total electorate, were eligible to vote in the regional polls.

The defeat of the secular Congress party in the three states, which send 62 members to the Lok Sabha, the 543-seat lower house of parliament, may dash its hopes of coming back to power at the national level.

The BJP’s rise has been fuelled by the Hindu nationalist ideology known as Hindutva, which has been transforming this multi-national country into one privileging Hindu Indians, some 80 per cent of the population, while marginalizing other faiths, in particular Islam.

On Jan. 22 Modi inaugurated the Ram Mandir temple in Ayodhya, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the heart of the country. Devotees believe it is built on the birthplace of Lord Ram, a sacred Hindu deity. India’s decisive break with secularism as a semi-official state ideology could be said to have begun in this city.

The Ram Temple had been located where the Babri Masjid, or Mosque of Babur, was built. The mosque stood for centuries before it was torn down in 1992 by Hindu nationalists, to shift India’s secular foundations toward a more visibly Hindu identity. 

Modi’s supporters feel that India was ruled by Muslim invaders for too long and, finally, Hindus are asserting themselves.

The demolition of the mosque, named for the 16^th century Muslim founder of the Mughal Empire, sparked deadly religious riots around India, killing about 2,000 people, most of them Muslims.

In 2019, India’s Supreme Court awarded the site to the Hindus, paving the way for the construction of the Ram Temple. It marked the culmination of a decade-long campaign to reclaim a disputed religious site as Hindu ground and the moment where the project of building a Hindu nation became officially endorsed by the state.

Ayodhya had seen a massive transformation ahead of the event, including expanded roads, and a new airport, and railway station. However, the Congress Party-led opposition boycotted the inauguration ceremony.

Apart from the $6 billion makeover of Ayodhya, the federal government has spent nearly $120 million to develop dozens of Hindu pilgrimage sites in the past decade.

Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of “The Demolition and the Verdict: Ayodhya and the Project to Reconfigure India,” calls it a political project that has reconfigured India. “It is a point where Hindu politics entered mainstream Indian politics.”

Nor is this the final debate over religious shrines. There is currently a dispute over the centuries-old Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, one of Hinduism's holiest cities, and the Shahi Idgah mosque in Mathura, both stoking fresh tensions in Uttar Pradesh.

Hindu groups say the Gyanvapi mosque, located in Modi’s own constituency, was built after a temple at the site was demolished by Muslim rulers in the 17th century. The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), a right-wing religious organization, has called on the Muslim community to voluntarily give up the area where it is located.

India’s Supreme Court recently stopped a survey of the 17th century Shahi Idgah mosque to ascertain if it contains Hindu relics. Hard-liners maintain that the mosque is built over the birthplace of the Hindu god Krishna. They claim it was built after the demolition of a Hindu temple, insisting it had been ordered by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb after he attacked the city and destroyed its temples in 1670.

The Haji Malang Muslim dargah, a Sufi Muslim shrine on the outskirts of Mumbai in the western state of Maharashtra has also become a polarizing issue. Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde of the regionalist Hindu ultranationalist political party Shiv Sena in January stirred controversy by asserting that the structure was really a temple belonging to Hindus and declared his commitment to “liberating” it. Hindus, who refer to the structure as Malanggad, have clashed with Muslim devotees and locals.

Many Muslims view these moves as attempts to undermine their rights to free worship and religious expression. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, an Indian political scientist, has stated that the purpose of reclaiming these shrines is to show Muslims their place.

“The purpose is not to craft a connection with Shiva or Krishna, the purpose is to permanently indict minorities. It is to use a sacred place of worship as a weaponized tool against another community,” Mehta wrote.

None of this is “ancient history.” The Muslim Mughals ruled over India’s majority Hindus for centuries prior to British rule, and they built thousands of mosques, forts and other landmarks, including the Taj Mahal, which houses the tomb of the emperor Shah Jahan’s wife.

Though India was partitioned into two states – India and Muslim-majority Pakistan – in 1947, India’s 1.4 billion people still include some 200 million Muslims, about 15 per cent of the country’s people. They constitute the third largest Muslim population in the world, after Indonesia and Pakistan.

For Hindu nationalists there remains lingering resentment over this fact, which can be stoked into communal violence.

 

Middle East War Damages China’s Image

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

When Hamas attacked Israel last Oct. 7, China at first assumed the latest fighting was no different from past conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians. Therefore, Beijing would display its support for the Palestinians, while presenting itself as a peace-seeking alternative to American hegemony, which, China maintains, foments strife and quarrels in the Middle East.

In fact China failed to understand the scope and nature of the Hamas massacre and its significance – and not just for Israel. The war upended the view China has vigorously promoted in recent years, one whereby the United States has been withdrawing from the Middle East and China has increased its presence there.

The Gulf states had responded and moved closer to China, particularly with economic agreements and military cooperations. A new peak of Chinese involvement was recorded in March 2023, when a treaty, apparently brokered by Beijing, was signed between Saudi Arabia and Iran -- a treaty that gave China the sense that it could lead a wave of “reconciliation” in the region.

In the current Gaza conflict, China also hopes to be a mediator. As the war intensified, China joined the declaration by others calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, and China’s Special Envoy Zhai Jun was sent for a round of visits in the Middle East, to burnish his country’s image.

His first stop was the Oct. 21 “Cairo Summit for Peace” in Egypt, attended mainly by representatives of Arab countries, together with a minority of delegates from Europe and elsewhere. Zhai Jun repeated China’s position that the Palestinian issue must not be sidelined and that it was important to reach a “comprehensive, just and long-lasting” solution based on the idea of two states -- Israel and an independent Palestinian state.

He added that “China will continue to work with all relevant parties of the international community to make unremitting efforts to end the war in Gaza.” From Cairo, Zhai next traveled to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose officials maintained that their countries attach great importance to the role and influence of China and were ready to strengthen their communication with Beijing and make efforts to solve the Palestinian issue.

Beijing has no regular contact with Hamas, but it does maintain links with the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. Following talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in Beijing last June, they announced the establishment of a strategic partnership between the two.

The final communique stated that “China supports the establishment of a sovereign state of Palestine on the basis of the 1967 border demarcation and with East Jerusalem as its capital.” The resumption of peace talks between Palestinians and Israel, it stated, should be based on the principle of’ “land for peace”’ the relevant UN resolutions and the two-state solution.

Since establishing formal diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992, China has viewed the country primarily as a trading partner. They have traded goods worth about $22 billion so far this year. Between 2013 and 2022, China accounted for six per cent of all foreign investments in Israel, and Israel has no desire to change that figure.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to travel to China in October and the conclusion of a free trade agreement between the two sides was high on the agenda. But the trip was postponed due to the Gaza war. Trade, innovation, Israel’s outsized geopolitical role, and its close ties to the U.S. all remain among China’s interests in Israel.

Meanwhile, China’s tightening ties with Iran have been accompanied by reports of Israeli companies facing difficulties importing high tech components from China and the suspension of services to Israel by the Chinese state-owned shipping giant China Ocean Shipping Company.

We now also have Iranian-supported Houthi forces in Yemen interrupting the flow of ships in the Red Sea. This threatens Chinese ships and hurts Chinese commercial interests. Diverting the navigation routes of many shipping companies from the Red Sea to routes around the Cape of Good Hope harms China, the world’s largest exporter and second largest importer.

The Houthi attacks have caused the cost to ship a standard 40-foot container from China to northern Europe to jump from $1,500 to $4,000, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany.

Furthermore, ports and other infrastructure in the Red Sea region – and China has invested in many of them – have been damaged. Yet Beijing at first remained silent about this and refused to join the international effort to guarantee freedom of navigation.

Observers say China’s cautious response is consistent with its general approach to Middle East crises and will likely remain so unless the attacks severely dent its trade and commercial interests.

But as the crisis deepens, China might be nearing the limit of what it is willing to sacrifice to maintain positive relations with Iran. Beijing has upped the intensity of its stance against the Houthis.

On Jan. 26 China finally called on the Houthis to stop their attacks and reportedly asked Tehran to help rein in the group or risk harming business relations with Beijing. After all, no country is more dependent on the free flow of products from one sea to another than China.