Houthi de facto authorities carried out a wave of arrests, rounding up scores of largely peaceful demonstrators who gathered to commemorate the 61st anniversary of North Yemen's 26th of September Revolution, reports Amnesty International. The organization is calling on Houthi authorities to "immediately and unconditionally release all demonstrators held solely for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of assembly." On Sept. 26, the date marking establishment of the Yemen Arab Republic in 1962, people took to the streets in cities across North Yemen, including Sana'a, Ibb, and Houdeidah, carrying flags of the republic that was formally disbanded with Yemen's unification in 1990.

Saudi Arabian border guards have killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum-seekers attempting to cross the border from Yemen, according to an Aug. 21 report from Human Rights Watch (HRW). The report documented incidents between March 2022 and June 2023, based on interviews with migrants, satellite imagery, and social media posts. According to the report, Saudi border guards used explosive weapons such as mortars against migrants, and shot them at close range with live ammunition. Saudi border guards reportedly fired on people even when they complied with orders. HRW called the recent pattern of killings a change from "an apparent practice of occasional shootings" to "widespread and systematic killings."

More than 40 Yemeni civil society organizations released a declaration on July 26 laying out a vision for how to achieve justice and reconciliation post-conflict. They highlight the importance of addressing past human rights violations to prevent future violence and call for accountability and reparations through a gender-equal and victim-centered process. The war, which started in 2014, has led to one of the world's most acute crises, with more than 20 million people requiring humanitarian assistance and 80% of the population facing hunger.

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention released a report May 30 finding that Afghanistan, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Thailand, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the US all participated in human rights violations against Abd al-Rahim Hussein al-Nashiri, the man accused of involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. Al-Nashiri is currently held in Guantanamo Bay prison, though he is said to have been previously detained in the territories of each of these countries. 

A first round of official peace talks between Saudi Arabia and the Houthi rebels concluded April 14 in Yemen's capital, Sana'a, followed by the (long-delayed, and painstakingly negotiated) release of 880 prisoners from both sides of the country's eight-year war. It's not the first time that Saudi Arabia, which leads a coalition backing Yemen's internationally recognized government, has spoken directly with the rebels. But some see new momentum in this effort to end the war, particularly given the recent rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which has close ties to the Houthis. Still, getting a truce back in place (the last one expired in October) and sorting out the various sides' grievances will not be easy—especially as not all the groups vying for power in Yemen are represented at the talks: The government is notably absent, as are the powerful separatists of the Southern Transitional Council.

As part of its China-brokered deal to re-establish diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, Iran has agreed to stop arming Yemen's Houthi rebels, the Wall Street Journal has reported. Officially, Tehran denies arming the rebels, who have been fighting forces aligned with Yemen's internationally recognized government—including a Saudi- and United Arab Emirates-led coalition—for eight years. Regardless of the report's veracity, the deal between the regional rivals has put a renewed focus on efforts to end the conflict in Yemen, which many have portrayed as a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Yemen's nationwide truce expired on Oct. 2, as warring parties failed to agree on terms for a renewal. With each side blaming the other for the failure and negotiations ongoing to find common ground, there's concern that fighting will erupt once again on familiar front lines, especially in the central province of Marib and the southwestern city of Taiz. While the gunfire and shelling never completely stopped over the past six months—in some places it got worse—the truce did offer some real respite for Yemenis who have suffered through seven and a half years of war.

In a series of brief interviews with vlogger and activist songster Geof Bard, CounterVortex producer Bill Weinberg dissects the sinister "tankie" phenomenon on the contemporary Western "left," which paradoxically supports Russian imperialism in the name of a misguided "anti-imperialism." This absurd double standard is enabled by the so-called "Chomsky Rule," which holds that we are only permitted to protest the crimes of US imperialism—and thereby renders the crimes of rival imperialisms invisible to the activist-left milieu. The pseudo-left betrayal of Ukraine to imperialist aggression actually undermines our moral authority to oppose the crimes of the US and its client states in places like Gaza and Yemen.