TEHRAN(Basirat) : “The country is on the brink of famine, with over 60 percent of the population not knowing where their next meal will come from,” the leaders of the U.N. World Food Program, Unicef and the World Health Organization said in an unusual joint statement.
This is Buthaina, a girl believed to be 4 or 5 who was the only survivor in her
family of a bombing last week by the Saudi coalition that killed 14 people.
Human Rights Watch has repeatedly concluded that many Saudi airstrikes were
probable war crimes and that the U.S. shares responsibility because it provides
the Saudis with air-to-air refueling and intelligence used for airstrikes, as
well as with much of the weaponry.
Yet victims like Buthaina aren’t on our television screens and rarely make the
news pages, in part because Saudi Arabia is successfully blocking foreign
journalists from the rebel-held areas. I know, because I’ve been trying for
almost a year to get there and thought I had arranged a visit for this week —
and then Saudi Arabia shut me down.
With commercial flights banned, the way into rebel areas is on charter flights
arranged by the United Nations and aid groups. But Saudi military jets control
this airspace and ban any flight if there’s a journalist onboard. I don’t think
the Saudis would actually shoot down a plane just because I was on it, but the
U.N. isn’t taking chances.
This is maddening: Saudi Arabia successfully blackmails the United Nations to
bar journalists so as to prevent coverage of Saudi atrocities.
2 IN 3 YEMENIS DON’T KNOW WHERE THEIR NEXT MEAL IS COMING FROM
The Saudis don’t want you to see children like this one, Alaa, severely
malnourished and photographed by a World Food Program team. Two days later, Alaa
died.
"The situation in Yemen is a disgrace that brings shame to our global
community,” says Michelle Nunn, president of Care USA. "More than 20 million
Yemenis are in need of emergency assistance, and a child dies every five
minutes. Yet few Americans know about the daily bloodshed, near-famine
conditions and a raging cholera epidemic.”
U.S. should cut off military transfers to Saudi Arabia until it ends its
strangulation of Yemen.
In addition, the world’s worst cholera epidemic has broken out in Yemen, partly
because so many people are malnourished. An additional 5,000 Yemenis are
infected with cholera each day.
This catastrophe started under President Barack Obama, although he tried — not
nearly enough — to rein in Saudi Arabia. President Trump has removed the reins
and embraced the rash and inexperienced Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman,
who is overseeing the assault on Yemen.
SOURCE :ALALAAM