Why are people protesting against Mohammed Bin Salaman?
YemenExtra
Y.A
About Saudi Arabia’s still dismal human rights record, its involvement in the three-year-old Yemeni war, and the UK government’s arms sales to the country.
The Stop the War coalition and Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) are calling for pickets outside Downing Street during all three days of MbS’s visit, which are expected to attract large numbers of protesters.
“The UK has armed and supported the terrible war since day one, and there is no doubt that arms sales will be top of the agenda next week,” a statement from CAAT’s Andrew Smith said.
Saudi Arabia has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstate former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is a staunch ally of the Riyadh regime.
At least 13,600 people have been killed since the onset of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Yemen. Much of the Arabian Peninsula country’s infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been reduced to rubble due to the war.
The United Nations says a record 22.2 million people are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger.
A high-ranking UN aid official recently warned against the “catastrophic” living conditions in Yemen, stating that there is a growing risk of famine and cholera there.
“After three years of conflict, conditions in Yemen are catastrophic,” John Ging, UN director of aid operations, told the UN Security Council on February 27.
He added, “People’s lives have continued unraveling. Conflict has escalated since November driving an estimated 100,000 people from their homes.”
Ging further noted that cholera has infected 1.1 million people in Yemen since last April, and a new outbreak of diphtheria has occurred in the war-ravaged Arab country since 1982.
“Theresa May is putting the interests of arms dealers above the rights of Yemeni people.”
The prince travels on to Paris and Washington DC after his stop in the UK.