Friday, July 28, 2017

The World’s Largest Humanitarian Crisis Is Basically Being Blacked Out by Western Media

Thank you to my husband for posting this and bringing this article to my attention. In some way, large or small, we need to take responsibility for what is happening in our nation and in this world we share. This begins, I believe, by committing to going to where the silence and learning what we do not know... My heart aches. May we all strengthen our heart muscles. These perilous times ask nothing less from all of us. - Molly
A Yemeni boy inspects the damage at a sports hall that was partially destroyed by Saudi-led air strikes in the Yemeni capital Sana'a on Jan. 19, 2016. (Photo by Mohammad Huwais/AFP/Getty Images)
The United States has fueled a conflict that has resulted
in war crimes and famine.


Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria are each the throes of a man-made famine, with twenty million people starving to death.

On Wednesday, July 19, a Saudi jet fired on a convoy of cars in Mawzaa district, Yemen. The strike is reported to have killed at least 20 civilians, many from the same family. These cars carried families who were fleeing renewed fighting near the city of Taiz in southwest Yemen. “Nowhere in Yemen is safe for civilians,” said Shabia Mantoo of the UN’s Refugee Agency (UNHCR). This incident, like others before it, says the UNHCR, “demonstrates the extreme dangers facing civilians in Yemen, particularly those attempting to flee violence, as they disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict.”
Saudi Arabia has made no official statement about the incident. It is likely that the Kingdom’s Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT) will study the evidence available. Earlier atrocities have been looked at by JIAT, and — in an April 2017 report — they have admitted culpability for many of them. But in each case, the Saudi government says that it was either “unaware of the presence of the hospital” that it struck or that civilian areas were being used by the anti-Saudi Yemeni coalition as military bases. It is impossible to deny the weight of evidence that shows Saudi bombardment of civilian areas — schools, hospitals, markets and residential areas. But they hesitate to take full responsibility.
The Arab world’s richest country, Saudi Arabia, went to war against the Arab world’s poorest country in 2015. In this period, Yemen — with a population of 25 million — has been substantially destroyed. The United Nations has been tracking the scale of the atrocity. The numbers are bewildering. Close to 20,000 people have died in this war, at least half of them civilians. The numbers of those injured could not be tabulated as half of Yemen’s hospitals and medical centers do not work. This means there is no accurate measure of those who come in to be treated.
Life for the survivors, thus far, has been perilous. For them, time drags on. The war continues endlessly. Suffering intensifies. Ancient maladies reappear. Amongst them is famine. Earlier this month, the UN’s special envoy for the secretary general for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh, was in New York. He addressed the Security Council about the situation in Yemen. Cheikh said that 20 million of Yemen’s 25 million people are affected by the war. Most of them have little access to water, sanitation, hygiene and food. Seven million of them — including 2.3 million children under the age of 5 — are on the “cusp of famine.” There are now 320,000 suspected cases of cholera in the country, with 1,700 confirmed deaths because of that disease.
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