In their latest wave of arrests, Houthi rebels in Yemen have jailed scores of people for celebrating a national holiday on what the Iran-backed militia considers the wrong date.

"Since 1962, Yemenis have celebrated September 26 as the birth of the Yemen Arab Republic," said Thomas Juneau, a Middle East analyst and professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada.

"However, for the Houthis, that date symbolically marks a very clear threat to their legitimacy," he said, adding that "any celebration of September 26 can be perceived as a call for a return to a republican Yemen, which is antithetical to what the Houthis stand for."

Instead, the Houthis have sought to enforce September 21 as the country's national holiday.

On that day in 2014, the militia — which was redesignated as terror organization by the US in January 2024 — took over Yemen's capital, Sanaa.

This resulted in a civil war between the Houthis and Yemen's internationally recognized government. The situation escalated in 2015 when a Saudi-led international coalition joined in support of the government.

Since then, the country has been effectively split in two. The northwest, including Sanaa and around 70% of the population, is under the control of the Houthis, while the government, which is meanwhile represented by a Presidential Council, presides in the southern port city Aden. The Southern Transitional Council, a separatist group allied with the Presidential Council and backed by the United Arab........

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