Tuesday, January 01, 2019

Starving the Yemeni People

The Socialist Party has always been on the side of or fellow-workers wherever and whenever they are victims of capitalism's brutality. In Yemen, many of the blog's posts have highlighted the atrocities of the Saudi Arabian coalition but the Houthi rebels are complicit in the suffering of the Yemeni people.

 The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) announced in a statement that they had documented food aid diversion in Houthi-controlled regions, including Yemen's capital city, Sana'a.

 "At a time when children are dying in Yemen because they haven't enough food to eat, that is an outrage," said WFP executive director David Beasley. "This criminal behavior must stop immediately."

As one senior U.N. official put it, "If there is no corruption, there is no famine."

The AP reports:
"Across Yemen, factions and militias on all sides of the conflict have blocked food aid from going to groups suspected of disloyalty, diverted it to front-line combat units or sold it for profit on the black market, according to public records and confidential documents obtained by the AP and interviews with more than 70 aid workers, government officials, and average citizens from six different provinces...Some observers have attributed the near-famine conditions in much of the country to the coalition's blockade of ports that supply Houthi-controlled areas. AP's investigation found that large amounts of food are making it into the country, but once there, the food often isn't getting to people who need it most—raising questions about the ability of United Nations agencies and other big aid organizations to operate effectively in Yemen."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/31/food-aid-yemen-snatched-starving-us-backed-saudi-allies

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