Sana'a - Houthi authorities arrested dozens of people in the last week of September 2025, as they have in past years, for peacefully celebrating or posting on social media about the anniversary of Yemen’s “September 26 Revolution,” Human Rights Watch said today. 

The holiday marks the establishment of the Yemen Arab Republic in 1962. The Houthis, the de facto authorities who control Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and much of northern Yemen believe that September 21, the day in which they took over Sanaa, should be celebrated instead.

“The Houthis seem to be expending far more resources on arresting people for harmless social media posts than they are on ensuring that people in territories their control have access to food and water,” said Niku Jafarnia, Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should be protecting people’s rights, not silencing anyone commemorating a national holiday.” 

The Houthis should immediately release all those detained solely for exercising their right to freedom of assembly and speech as well as all others who remain in arbitrary detention, including the dozens of United Nations and civil society staff arrested and disappeared over the last year and a half, Human Rights Watch said.

Starting around September 21, the Houthis began arresting dozens of people in relation to the commemoration of the holiday. Fares al-Hemyari, a Yemeni journalist, posted on X that hundreds of protestors had been arrested in Sanaa, Amran, Hajjah, Dhamar, Al-Bayda, Ibb, and Taizz governorates. 

Human Rights Watch spoke to five people whose relatives had been arrested. Many others said they feared reprisals from the Houthis if they spoke to Human Rights Watch about the arrests. 

Among those arrested are dozens of activists: Oras al-Eryani, a writer and satirist; Abdul Majeed Sabra, a well-known lawyer; and Aref Mohammed Qatran and Abdulsalam Qatran, the brother and nephew, respectively, of Judge Abdulwahab Qatran. Many of them have not been able to contact their families or a lawyer, and the authorities have refused to let their families know where their relatives are, amounting to enforced disappearance.

A brother of one detainee said that his brother left their house on the evening of September 22 “to throw out the trash and buy some groceries” and never returned. After searching for him for two hours, some family members contacted Houthi security authorities, who would not provide any details about his case.

The brother said that the family were able to confirm “through multiple sources” that the Houthis’ Security and Intelligence Service was holding him. However, the brother said that his family was “not officially informed of his whereabouts [by authorities], nor were we allowed to visit or communicate with him, despite repeated promises.” 

He added that his brother has diabetes, increasing the family’s concern for his well-being.

Abdul Majeed Sabra, a prominent lawyer in Sanaa, told Human Rights Watch in 2024 that after he posted on social media that he would provide legal services to lawyers who had been detained in relation to September 26 commemorations, Houthi members “directly threatened” him. On September 25, 2025, Houthi security forces stormed Sabra’s office and arrested him.

According to one interviewee, Sabra was detained in relation to a social media post, in which he had written: “You [Houthis] deny Yemenis the right to express joy over their own September 26 Revolution—the one that restored their dignity and reintroduced them to the true faith, away from the myths of the Imamate—by simply posting a photo on social media, which you dismiss as treason and subservience to foreign powers." Sabra’s family doesn’t know anything about his whereabouts, according to a post on X by Ishraq al-Maqtari, a prominent human rights defender who has been following his case.
Abdulwahab Qatran, a prominent judge in Sanaa who himself was previously arrested by the Houthis, said that the Houthis arrested his brother, Aref, along with Aref’s son Abdulsalam, on September 21 without any charges. Judge Qatran said that three military vehicles and a taxi arrived at his brother’s house in Hamdan and told Aref and Abdulsalam to hand themselves over to the authorities, and that otherwise, “they would take the doors off and storm the house, so [Aref and Abdulsalam] handed themselves over.” 

The judge said that his brother and nephew were held first at Hamdan Security Complex but moved to an unrevealed location on September 22. The judge said he communicated with them through one of the prisoners’ phones. The last call the family had with Aref was on September 22, when he said he has sick and concerned about his life.