Amnesty: British FM’s Remarks on Yemen Investigation ’Grossly Inadequate’

Local Editor

 

Amnesty International [AI] warned on Wednesday that recent comments from Britain’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond about investigating whether weapons supplied by the UK to Saudi Arabia have been used to commit war crimes and other breaches of international humanitarian law in the conflict in Yemen are "grossly misleading".

Speaking on the BBC Newsnight programme on Tuesday, Hammond said that there needs to be "proper investigations" into whether weapons supplied to Saudi Arabia have been misused in Yemen, adding that "we need to work with the Saudis to establish that international humanitarian law has been complied with". The Foreign Secretary also remarked: "We regularly intervene with the Saudis to encourage them to be transparent with us".

However, Amnesty said in a press release on Wednesday that it has called for the UK to immediately suspend arms exports to Saudi Arabia where there is a risk that the weapons could be used to commit human rights abuses in Yemen.

 

 

The organization said that it is insisting that, rather than apparently relying on Saudi Arabia to conduct its own investigation, the UK should conduct its own rigorous investigation into how weapons supplied to Riyadh have been used in Yemen. 

Amnesty further said that it is writing to Hammond urging him to act quickly, with the organisation laying out the necessary investigatory measures the government should undertake.

"Since the conflict in Yemen began eight months ago, more than 2,000 civilian - including at least 400 children - have been killed, and the vast majority of civilian deaths and injuries have been caused by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition’s often reckless and indiscriminate aerial bombing ["]campaign["]", said Amnesty. 

It added that the UK is a major supplier of arms and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia, and that Amnesty has repeatedly drawn UK officials’ attention to the Saudi-led military coalition’s appalling disregard for civilian lives in Yemen. Just last month [October], said Amnesty, the Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood acknowledged that weapons supplied by the UK to Saudi Arabia had "probably" been used in the conflict in Yemen, a reaction that Amnesty criticised as "far too relaxed". UK ministers have repeatedly said that they relied on Saudi Arabia’s own "assurances" over the proper use of UK-supplied weapons by its forces in Yemen.

Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen meanwhile said: "Philip Hammond’s remarks about ’investigations’ over Saudi war crimes in Yemen are grossly inadequate".

"We need an independent investigation into whether UK arms supplied to Saudi Arabia have been used to commit appalling attacks on civilians in Yemen", she said.

"Rather than meekly accepting Saudi assurances over Yemen, the government should have been urgently investigating mounting reports of Saudi war crimes all along", she further said. 

"It shouldn’t have taken more than 2,000 Yemeni civilian deaths for the Foreign Secretary to finally realise that simply relying on Saudi denials over war crimes was always a disastrous course of action", Allen said. 

A Saudi-led coalition backed by the United States has been carrying out a military aggression on Yemen by launching airstrikes against the country since March 26. 

The airstrikes have not been authorized by the United Nations [UN].