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AL-MUKALLA: The Yemeni Houthis have abducted dozens of Yemenis in the past 48 hours, the latest in a series of mass arrests in the areas they control to commemorate the 1962 revolution.

Local media and activists said on Sunday that academics, politicians and journalists in Sanaa, Dhamar, Hodeidah and Taiz were among those abducted because they were celebrating the 62nd anniversary of the 1962 revolution on September 26 or inciting the public to celebrate it.

According to Faisal Al-Shabebi, a Yemeni journalist with the former ruling General People's Congress party, the Houthis kidnapped at least three senior members of the party in Dhamar province during their revolution celebrations. Among them were the head of the party's provincial office, Abdul Khaleq Al-Munejar, and journalist Fuad Al-Nahari.

The crackdown in Dhamar came as other Houthis stormed homes and gatherings in Sanaa, Taiz, Hodeidah and Ibb, abducting Yemenis who were celebrating the revolution or had expressed their intention to celebrate Revolution Day on Thursday.

“These arrests by the Houthi militia are part of their pathetic attempts to suppress free people who reject their racist, sectarian ideology, to wipe out the immortal September 26 revolution and to force Yemeni society into submission to this gang through terror,” Al-Shabebi said.

The revolution in September 1962 deposed the Zaidi imamates in northern Yemen, ending centuries of oppression and paving the way for the founding of the Yemen Arab Republic.

Yemenis say that the Houthi militia and the imams share the same radical doctrine that limits rule over Yemen to Hashemite families, and that the Houthis want to revive that rule.

Abdulrahman Barman, a Yemeni human rights activist and director of the American Center for Justice, told Arab News that the Houthis abducted a large number of Yemenis in different regions of Dhamar province on Saturday and Sunday and that some of them were abducted because they celebrated the revolution or called on the public to do the same.

Barman believes the Houthis began cracking down on celebrations of the 1962 revolution days before Revolution Day to prevent Yemenis from taking part in large rallies on Thursday.

According to Barman, in September last year, Yemenis organized rare large-scale public celebrations in Sanaa and other Houthi-controlled areas to commemorate the 1962 revolution, during which they raised the Yemeni flag and chanted nationalist slogans. Despite Houthi attempts to break up these celebrations, they organized these large-scale celebrations in memory of the 1962 revolution.

Yemeni human rights groups, including the Musawaah Organization for Human Rights and Freedoms and the Rasd coalition, condemned the Houthis' crackdown on Yemenis celebrating Revolution Day, calling on them to stop arrests and allow the public to celebrate unhindered.

Earlier, the Geneva-based Organization for Rights and Freedoms (SAM) said in a report published on Saturday, the tenth anniversary of the Houthi military's seizure of power, that the Houthis had closed 163 newspapers, magazines and radio stations, blocked 200 websites and arrested or harassed dozens of Yemeni journalists over the past decade.

During this time, the Houthis have arrested at least 18,000 Yemenis, including many who were victims of the “disappeared.”

According to the SAM report, their indiscriminate shelling of residential areas in Yemen killed at least 15,000 civilians and injured more than 34,000. More than two million landmines laid by Yemeni militias killed at least 2,632 people, including 477 children and 168 women, and injured 3,386 people, including 730 children and 219 women.

Since September 2014, the Houthis have destroyed 713 of their opponents' homes and recruited more than 30,000 children.

The Houthis stormed the Yemeni capital Sanaa on September 21, 2014, before spreading across the country, unleashing a war that, according to the UN, has killed more than 100,000 people, displaced millions and sparked the world's worst humanitarian crisis.