Iranian Ambassador Criticizes Silence Over Saudi’s Use of Darfur Children Soldiers in Yemen

YemenExtra

SH.A.

The Iranian Ambassador to London Hamid Baeidinejad criticized the silence of foreign-based Persian-language media over deploying Darfur children soldiers in Yemen war.

In a Sunday tweet, he wrote, “the New York Times report has created a great outrage among researchers and media at the US and Europe’s silence over the Saudi coalition measure to employ insurgent Darfur mercenaries who have [previously] violated human rights, and especially over the deployment of children in the Yemeni war.”

The silence of foreign-based Persian-language media over the issue is strange since they claim to be concerned about the regional impacts of this war, he added.

According to a Friday report by the New York Times, “at any time for nearly four years as many as 14,000 Sudanese militiamen have been fighting in Yemen in tandem with the local militia aligned with the Saudis, according to several Sudanese fighters who have returned and Sudanese lawmakers who are attempting to track it. Hundreds, at least, have died there.”

The report went on to mention that most of these mercenaries belong to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, a tribal militia previously known as the Janjaweed. They were blamed for the systematic rape of women and girls, indiscriminate killing and other war crimes during Darfur’s conflict, and veterans involved in those horrors are now leading their deployment to Yemen — albeit in a more formal and structured campaign.

It also adds that children made up nearly 20 to 40 percent of Sudanese units in Yemen.