Local Editor
An NGO focused on promoting human rights and social justice in the Gulf has called on the Saudi-led coalition to immediately halt its military action in Yemen and lift the blockade imposed on the country.
According to the Lualua TV website, the Gulf Institute for Democracy and Human Rights [GIDHR] accused the coalition of committing war crimes since launching its campaign in March 2015.
A report dubbed, ‘Targeting Yemeni Civilians: War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity December 2016,’ puts the number of Yemenis killed and wounded at 23985, including 1154 children.
“Killing civilians is something the coalition countries got used to doing through direct and repeated attacks on homes, residential neighborhoods, and places where civilians gather. As a result, thousands of civilians most of them women and children were killed,” the GIDHR report states.
The coalition, which also includes Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Sudan, attacked Saudi Arabia’s southern neighbor in the hope of reinstating the ousted president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. But despite the support from both Washington and London, Riyadh and its partners have been unable to achieve any of their stated military objectives.
The report also points to the use of internationally banned weapons, mass killings as well as the “systematic and organized” starvation of Yemen’s civilian population through the land, air and sea blockade.
According to the NGO, the blockade is a “model for collective punishment that international law criminalizes.”
The GIDHR’s recommendations include a call for the formation of “an independent international committee to investigate all crimes committed in Yemen and refer the perpetrators of serious crimes to international courts.”
And while the NGO has vowed to continue to support human rights in Yemen, much of the international community has remained silent over the carnage.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
