News - World: Britain and the United States provided the Saudi-led coalition with the weapons used in hundreds of attacks on civilians in Yemen between January 2021 and the end of February 2022, according to a recent report by Oxfam. 

The Oxfam report came just days before the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) launched a lawsuit aimed at ending the British government’s multi-billion pound arms sales, including Typhoon fighter jets, missiles and bombs, as well as ongoing maintenance and support, for use in the Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE)-led war in Yemen. 

Despite the overwhelming evidence that the coalition has repeatedly breached IHL, the government has continued to promote and protect weapons sales. According to CAAT, the UK has supplied arms worth over £23 billion to Saudi Arabia, when “open licences” are taken into account, several times the official figures provided by the government, since the war in Yemen began in April 2015.

The venal Saudi monarchy, which routinely assassinates its opponents, tortures, imprisons and beheads oppositionists and dissidents, and the repressive UAE provide the major props for Britain’s defence industry—one of its few remaining manufacturing sectors. They serve as key custodians of Britain’s geostrategic interests in the energy-rich region.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government is intent on maintaining the barbaric House of Saud’s control over the Arabian Peninsula. It is suppressing any information that Riyadh or its backers are committing war crimes and avoiding accusations that the UK is violating its own rules against supplying arms.

But in July 2020, then Trade Secretary Liz Truss resumed arms sales, claiming any violations of IHL were only “isolated incidents.” Since then, the British government has licensed at least £2.2 billion additional weapons sales to the coalition, while cutting its 2021-22 aid to Yemen by more than half.

The British government has refused Freedom of Information requests from the website Middle East Eye for the release of documents surrounding its arms sales to Riyadh between October 1 and 15, 2016. A Saudi-led coalition’s air strike on a crowded funeral hall in Sanaa killed more than 140 people and injured over 500 on October 8, 2016, an attack UN monitors found violated international humanitarian law.

The government’s refusal to provide the information testifies to the widespread and deep hostility of the British public to the government’s arming of the coalition.

The British government supports some of the most barbaric and repressive regimes on the planet. Its continued supply of arms to the Saudi-led war on Yemen explodes its claims to promote human rights and democracy on the international arena, including the torrent of hypocrisy seeking to justify NATO’s military intervention against Russia in Ukraine.

Source: WSWS Website 

#Yemen #US #UK #Arms Sale #US-Saudi Aggression About 1 year