Report: living conditions in southern Yemen worsening; the repercussion of the occupation

YemenExtra

The suffering of civilians has increased due to the US-Saudi-Emirati occupation of the southern governorates of Yemen, and has recently escalated to the highest levels.

In a report issued today, the Southern Governorates Media Center stated that over the past period, the level of public services deteriorated, security chaos escalated, the rate of violations of human rights increased, and the exchange rate of the national currency collapsed to unprecedented levels as a catastrophic result of the economic policies created by the occupation, with support of the mercenary government.

The center pointed out that providing the minimum basic requirements for life by families in the southern governorates has become a major challenge. There has been a major escalation of popular discontent against the occupying countries, the mercenary government that reject the policy of starvation and subjugation; however, the mercenary government nor the Saudi regime did not pay any attention to the loud voices rejecting starvation policies.

Civilians faced that disregard by increasing their demands, calling now to improve services and reduce food prices, expel the occupation and overthrow the government of mercenaries. The occupying countries saw that the ceiling of demands threatened their interests and hidden agenda in these provinces, so they directed their militias to suppress the protests and end them by force.

Based on the directives of the occupying countries, its armed militias confronted these peaceful protests in the streets of Aden, Ataq, Mukalla, and Wadi Hadramout districts with a force of arms, forced arrests, chases, and raids on the homes of the free people who rejected the occupation.

The militias of the Transitional Council in Aden and the Islah militias in Shabwa and Hadramawt resorted to “conspiracy” theory to justify the commission of these crimes.

This repressive trend was evident in the violations practiced by the Islah party militias against peaceful protests in the valley and coast of Hadramout, Shabwa and Taiz during the month of September, in parallel with the militias of the Southern Transitional Council of the UAE launching criminal repressive campaigns against dozens of peaceful protesters in the streets of Aden and Lahj.

All of this reflected a Saudi-Emirati desire to confront the street and its legitimate demands, with armed repression.

The report stated that the Center’s monitoring unit recorded 380 crimes against peaceful protesters in the occupied southern governorates during the month of September, including 3 killings, 280 arrests, and 36 neighborhood raids to search for activists opposed to the starvation policies implemented by the occupying countries and Hadi’s mercenary government.

It also included 42 chase cases activists were objected tp in Aden, Shabwa, Mukalla and the cities of the Hadramout Valley, 24 shootings against protesters, and the imposition of staying-home on citizens after their support for and participating in peaceful protests.

Despite the escalation of the rate of violations and repression by the militias of the aggressors, the peaceful protests that took the nature of marches and partial and complete strikes by the private sector did not stop, after the dollar exchange rate reached 1200 riyals, and the Saudi riyal reached 320 Yemeni riyals.

In conjunction with the continuous collapse of the living conditions in the occupied southern governorates; The wave of popular anger increased, voices against the occupying countries rose, and pictures of the rulers of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and mercenary leaders were torn in the various streets of the southern cities.

Expulsion of the occupation has become the only option for the people of the occupied governorates who have realized the dangers of the systematic starvation policies that the occupying countries are behind and implemented by the Hadi government.

The protesters also demanded the return of the money looted from crude oil sales from Shabwa, Marib and Hadramout in Turkish and Saudi banks, which is estimated at two billion dollars annually and is sufficient to bring about economic and living stability in the country, in addition to forming committees to follow up on the funds looted by mercenary leaders in a number of Arab countries, which are estimated at more than than 30 billion dollars.

These voices of the poor provoked panic in the hearts of wealth thieves in the occupied provinces and united all the militias and the occupying countries, including America and Britain, to suppress these peaceful protests and confront them with live bullets, arrests, raids and chases, and resort to various methods to abort the angry popular movement, such as igniting the fuse of strife between the armed factions that control Aden. It controls the fate of its residents with the support of the occupying countries, as armed confrontations erupted between two factions of the Transitional Council in the city of Aden on Saturday, and led to the death and injury of dozens of citizens and militia members.

The confrontations took place in the city of Crater and spread to Khor Maksar, and the transitional council took it as an opportunity to control Sirah and deploy Saudi and Emirati armored vehicles throughout Aden in a new attempt to tighten control over the city and suppress any upcoming popular protests.

With the presence of about 39 armed factions in the city of Aden, indicators show the continuing collapse of the living situation and the decline in the average income of families in the occupied governorates, and that popular anger will not stop, as the issue is related to survival.

Therefore, it is impossible to control the peaceful protests with weapons and force, after most of the citizens in those governorates are on the brink of starvation as a result of the massive collapse in the currency exchange rate and the rise in the prices of basic foodstuffs.

Therefore, most southern families lost more than 70% of their sources of income, because the salaries of employees in those governorates are still the same as they were in 2016, and they were not raised in conjunction with the collapse of the currency exchange rate, as the average income of families that depend on monthly salaries from the Bank of Aden About 50 dollars for each salary of 500,000 riyals.

The majority of families who depend on the basic salary as a source of income live in difficult humanitarian conditions, and according to local sources in Aden and Mukalla, most families that were well off, face a great challenge in providing their basic needs that are vital to survival.

In the occupied southern governorates, the middle class ended in society, and new layers of war merchants were born from the leaders of mercenaries, as families there lived in a state of forced austerity due to the almost daily price fluctuations resulting from the collapses in the currency exchange rate.

According to the sources, most families in Aden, which until 2017, were well off, were recently forced to prepare cheap meals due to the weak purchasing power of the currency, and with the increase in fish prices, the demand for bagha has increased, which is one of the cheap types of fish compared to other types of fish that vary in size. Its prices range between ten thousand and 12 thousand riyals, and its price exceeds the capabilities of most citizens.

Economic estimates indicate that the inflation rate in the prices of basic foodstuffs has risen to more than 250% compared to the free governorates, as a result of the rise in the phenomenon of monopoly and the concealment of goods by merchants in anticipation to increase in price.

The echoes of the peaceful popular protests panicked the occupation coalition and the mercenaries of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which raised the concern of the International Quartet, and thwarted the attempts of the Hadi government, which tried to trade and use the protests as a tool to obtain more money as aid and urgent donations from a number of countries, specifically the occupying countries.

However, the International Quartet disavowed the mercenary government and in its statement issued late last September, blew up all its hopes of obtaining any new deposit for the Central Bank branch in Aden. The statement placed the mercenary government before the people’s demands.

America and Britain were satisfied with pressuring the Saudi-Emirati occupation countries to quickly return the government of mercenaries to the city of Aden to implement the completion of the Riyadh Agreement, which protects its hidden interests, so that the government returned to Aden without any promises of support to improve the collapsed services.

Away from the demands of the street in the southern governorates, the occupying countries continue to put pressure on the parties, the transitional mercenaries and Hadi’s government to implement the Riyadh Agreement.

Observers believe that igniting the confrontations between the armed factions in Aden was planned to manage the crisis of the Hadi government, which failed to provide any solutions to stop the economic collapse in those governorates, as well as to pressure the STC to implement Saudi demands represented in removing the armed militias from inside the city of Aden and leaving the city to loyal forces for Hadi, as a condition of the Riyadh Agreement.