FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Human Rights Groups Demand ‘Justice for Yemen Means Justice for the World’
Sept. 13, 2018 (EIRNS)—As the 39th UN Human Rights Council Session in Geneva started (Sept. 10-28), the first of several side events organized by INSAN for Human Rights and Peace on Yemen, took place on Sept. 11th. Under the topic “Human Rights Violations and Crimes against Children in Yemen by the Saudi Coalition,” Aiman Al-Mansour, the President of INSAN; Abdusalam Aldhahebi, activist of INSAN in Sweden; Randi Nord, independent journalist and founder of Geopolitics Alert/U.S.A.); and Elke Fimmen of the German Schiller Institute, spoke at the first such event, which was moderated by Dr. Hassan Fartousi, researcher in International Law at the University of Geneva.
The meeting started off with an absolutely shocking video of happy children, who only minutes later were killed by a Saudi-coalition airstrike that hit their school bus on Aug. 9. In that attack, 40 boys, ages 6 to 11, were killed while on a school trip, and 11 adults with them also died. The weapon used was a laser-guided bomb made by Lockheed Martin, one of many thousands sold to Saudi Arabia as part of billions of dollars of weapons exports. Saudi Arabia is the biggest single customer for the U.S. and British arms industries, and both governments support the Saudi-led coalition with intelligence and refuelling their warplanes. On this topic, Randi Nord elaborated in her presentation.
Elke Fimmen opened the panel’s presentations with her speech “Justice for Yemen Means Justice for the World,” underlining that 9/11 began the series of disastrous, imperial geopolitical regime-change wars, which have brought civilization to the brink of thermonuclear confrontation of superpowers. Calling for full publication of classified documents on the Saudi networks behind 9/11 by the U.S. President, she spoke about the effort of the Schiller Institute for a Four-Power agreement for peace through development, and presented the Schiller Institute’s “Felix Yemen” Reconstruction plan, in the context of the New Silk Road dynamic. It will be only through such a complete shift in international relations, that civilization will have a chance, she stressed.
The UN Experts report on the humanitarian situation in Yemen, which was presented in August 2018, clearly documents that the horrendous situation in Yemen has been brought about as a result of Saudi-coalition airstrikes and blockades, Fimmen stated, and she called for wide circulation of the report and action on the level of the UN Security Council to stop this war now.
Aiman Al-Mansour presented more shocking facts about attacks on civilians and the situation of children from the UN Experts report. He contrasted the UN Convention for the Rights of Children with the present reality in Yemen in his speech “Children Under War in Yemen.”
Abdusalam Aldhahebi ended the panel by showing pictures of six individual children in Yemen in this war, appealing on everybody, to realize that we are not talking about numbers, when we speak about civilian victims, but about precious individuals, all of whom have their own personal history and their own story, and that every one of these children has a right to life and to a future.
Just before this meeting, on behalf of the Iraqi Development Organization, Abdusalam Aldhahebi had the opportunity to deliver a hard-hitting, one-minute statement to the ongoing plenary meeting of delegations, press and UN representatives, in which he called for a swift delivery of the new UN Eminent Experts report (“Situation of Human Rights in Yemen, Including Violations and Abuses Since September 2014,” published Aug. 17, 2018, A/HRC/39/43) to the members of the UN Security Council for immediate action to stop the war and the genocide caused by the Saudi-led coalition against civilians.
That report had been acknowledged by new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, in her opening presentation of the Council’s session, announcing further investigations and the holding to accountability for war crimes by those, which were identified by the report. Bachelet referenced the horrible school bus massacre, followed by other horrific series of airstrikes, leaving dozens of civilians and children killed and injured in Al Hudaydah. She also called the recent Saudi royal order practically providing a blanket pardon to members of the Saudi armed forces for actions taken in Yemen “very concerning.” Aldhahebi, while endorsing her statement, nevertheless insisted that there should be no further delay in stopping the war now and the start of political peace negotiations, instead of waiting for yet another series of reports and investigations, when the crimes have been sufficiently documented over and over again.
As this unspeakable, entirely man-made humanitarian crisis is happening in Yemen at this very moment, Western media and most politicians are neglecting the reality, and instead are constructing horror stories about an imagined “coming humanitarian crisis of unseen proportions in Idlib, Syria.” Such hypocrisy must stop and those responsible for planning and conducting genocide and those tolerating it, have be held to account!
