The Emirate News network has revealed documentation of children undergoing brainwashing by Iranian allies in Yemen, in order to fight the government army and the Saudi coalition
A boy recruited to fight by the Houthis
The Houthi rebels in Yemen have carried out many atrocities during their ongoing rule in large parts of Yemen that include disgraceful treatment of women and minorities, but now it has been revealed how the Houthis use the education system to recruit elementary school children for combat roles.
A video revealed on the state-run news network "Al-Arabiya" shows how students at a school in the capital Sanaa are holding a play in which there is a clear call for children to mobilize to the front and fight for the Houthi regime.
In the play, one of the children plays a soldier who was killed in battle and a teacher on the school's teaching staff passes the rifle to another child.
"For the sake of pride and fairness, we must sacrifice the supreme sacrifice so that future generations will live with dignity," the boy says in front of his classmates.
This is a rare record of what is happening within the walls of the Houthi-controlled education system, which provides thousands of combatant children for the service of the organization.
The European Organization for Human Rights in the Mediterranean Basin, which operates from Switzerland, last year published a report detailing how the Houthis use the education system and charities such as orphanages and enrichment centers to recruit children to the battlefield. 10,300 children since 2014 and that thousands of them were injured and killed on the fighting front.
The Houthi leadership has previously acknowledged that children have been recruited into the organization's service and in 2012 the group's leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, undertook, during a meeting with UN representatives, to gradually integrate the children recruited back into the education system.
