The War on Yemen’s Invisible Victims
YemenExtra
By
A Yemeni child dies every ten minutes from preventable causes. Each week that the war on Yemen continues and conditions remain as they are, more than one thousand children die from starvation and disease.
The Saudi coalition blockade and bombing campaign are responsible for the vast majority of these deaths because they make food and medicine too expensive or unavailable for millions upon millions of Yemeni civilians impoverished by the ongoing war. Thousands of civilians have been killed directly by coalition bombs and missiles, but even more have died from the other consequences of more than three years of the indefensible war on Yemen.
The U.S. and U.K. have supported this campaign from the start, and they show no signs of stopping. Our governments remain deeply complicit in the wrecking and starving of Yemen.
Yemenis perish from starvation every day, but their suffering and death remain largely invisible to the outside world. Even when the staggering numbers of people on the brink of famine make it into news reports, the severity of the crisis often does not hit home until the audience sees the bodies of small children ravaged by starvation.
Like the many tens of thousands of other Yemeni children whose lives have been claimed by hunger, young Mohammed’s life was snuffed out because of a despicable war waged on the people of Yemen.
The U.S. aids and abets the Saudis and Emiratis in carrying out their part of that war, and it bears part of the responsibility for killing innocent Yemenis by the tens of thousands. Yemen desperately needs peace, and it is within the power of the Saudi coalition and its Western patrons to halt their part in this atrocious war. It is to their everlasting shame and discredit that they continue the war in spite of the massive suffering and loss of life that it is causing.