







According to our Observer, who took this photo, people from Jizan were stopped at checkpoints set up by the border police.



This village belonging to members of the al-Said tribe has already been evacuated. Photo by our Observer.

Authorities have threatened to evacuate this village. Photo by our Observer.

A Saudi activist filmed arguments between members of tribes living in southern Saudi Arabia and a guard at a checkpoint in Jizan, a village near the border between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Saudi authorities deem the zone around Jizan dangerous and want to evacuate the village. However, the residents are refusing to budge. An activist from Jizane told us why.The video below shows men from the village of Jizane being stopped at a roadblock manned by border guards. An older man from Jizan steps forward. He tells the border police that it is the locals’ right to return to their village and stay there if they so desire.A second video shows the same older man sitting inside a border post, speaking to an officer, who is listening to him intently. The old man from Jizan is trying to convince the officer that the village does not need to be evacuated.Suddenly, the officer realizes that he is being filmed by one of the other people from Jizan. He orders him to stop recording.The online news site Sabq quoted Mohammed Shamrani, the governor of Aldair Bani Malik, located in the region of Jizan, who said that the evacuation orders had come from higher up – in other words, likely from the interior ministry. Several villages in the border zone with Yemen have already been evacuated.Everyone who was evacuated was given significant financial compensation as well as assistance with finding new housing, according to Shamrani. The governor further explained that the reasoning behind the evacuations is that Saudi Arabia wants to secure its border with Yemen and create a buffer zone between the two countries.FRANCE 24 made repeated attempts to contact the relevant authorities. For the time being, our team has not received a response.Since March 2015, a coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been conducting a military intervention in Yemen. The coalition supports exiled President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and is working to counter the insurrection led by Houthi rebels. The conflict has spilled across the border into Saudi Arabia on several occasions. In June 2013, for example, Houthi rebels in Yemen fired rockets across the border into the Saudi town of Najrane. Three people were killed and others were wounded. In retaliation, Saudi helicopters bombed Houthi positions.More recently, in June 2016, Saudi forces thwarted a Houthi attack on the towns of al-Khubah and Tawal, located on the Saudi-Yemeni border.