STC rights body says it will widen documentation of alleged violations in Hadramout
Yemen Herald News 
ADEN, Yemen — The Southern Transitional Council’s legal and human rights body said Tuesday it would widen its documentation of alleged violations in Hadramout and other southern governorates.
The Legal and Human Rights Affairs Authority of the Southern Transitional Council announced the decision after its regular meeting for August, held in Aden.
Acting head Mohammed Moqbel Saif chaired the session.
Saif called for stronger institutional performance and closer integration of the authority’s legal and human rights work, according to the council’s account of the meeting. He said monitoring and documentation should be intensified to uphold the rule of law and protect freedoms.
The authority’s legal team briefed the meeting on the cases it is handling and on steps already taken.
Much of that briefing concerned Hadramout. The authority said peaceful demonstrators marking the 55th anniversary of the Southern Army had faced repression and arrests there.
It did not give a number of detainees, name anyone held, or identify the force it holds responsible.
Participants also discussed what the authority described as the storming of the Southern Workers’ Union headquarters in Aden. The account gave no date for that incident.
The meeting reviewed documentation of incidents in Hadramout running from late August into early September, along with a semi-annual report on violations across the southern governorates. Neither document was released publicly.
In a closing statement the authority said it would continue documenting violations, providing legal support and dealing with local and international human rights organisations. It described its own work as professional and independent.
The council said the effort was intended to strengthen justice, protect freedoms and serve what it called the aspirations of southerners for institutions built on law and respect for human rights.
The account of the meeting rests on the council’s own statement. Yemen Herald found no independent confirmation of the meeting, its conclusions, or the arrests the authority describes in Hadramout, and the internationally recognised government has not responded publicly to the allegations.
The council is the main southern separatist movement in Yemen and is led by Aidarous al-Zubaidi. It was founded in Aden in May 2017 and has pressed for self-rule or independence in the territory of the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, a separate state from 1967 until unification in 1990.
Its relations with the internationally recognised government broke down over the winter. Human Rights Watch said Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, declared a 90-day nationwide state of emergency on Dec. 30 after the council took over Hadramout governorate.
A week later, Saudi-led coalition and government forces pushed the council out of the territory it had seized, the rights group said.
Protests followed across the south through February. Human Rights Watch investigated demonstrations in Aden, Shabwa and Hadramout and said government forces killed at least six people and wounded dozens in Aden and Shabwa, and detained dozens in Hadramout.
In Seiyun, the capital of Hadramout, government-aligned National Shield Forces fired on demonstrators at the airport on Feb. 6 and arrested an estimated 35 people, according to the report. Nobody was killed.
Those detained were held at the airport, which the rights group described as an unofficial detention site, for several days without charge. They were released after signing pledges not to take part in unlicensed protests.
Amgad Sabeeh, who heads the council’s media and culture department in Hadramout, told Human Rights Watch that security forces had accused him and other council leaders of inciting people to protest.
In Aden on Feb. 19, security forces fired on supporters who tried to storm the presidential palace, killing one person and wounding at least 25, according to a council statement given to the rights group. An activist said 28 people were detained and held for more than two weeks without charge.
Al-Alimi ordered their release on March 8, and Human Rights Watch confirmed the following day that they had been freed.
The organisation wrote to the Yemeni government on March 12 seeking a response to its findings and said it received none.
Yemen is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which protects freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Article 42 of the Yemeni constitution provides for free speech and political participation.
“As power changes hands in southern Yemen, the warring parties need to end the cycle of violations,” said Niku Jafarnia, the group’s Yemen and Bahrain researcher.
Human Rights Watch said all sides in Yemen’s 11-year conflict, the government and the council among them, have suppressed free speech.
Amnesty International called on the council in March 2024 to end what it described as a crackdown on civic space in areas under its control.
The council announced its own dissolution shortly before the February protests, Human Rights Watch said. It has gone on operating in public since. Supporters held rallies in Aden and Hadramout on Sept. 4, four days before the authority met.
Hadramout is Yemen’s largest governorate by area and holds most of the country’s onshore oil production, which makes control of it a question of revenue as well as territory.
The authority did not say when it would publish the Hadramout documentation or the semi-annual report.
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