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.
Please continue this
article here http://www.alternet.org/world/yemen-worlds-largest-humanitarian-crisis
or here http://billmoyers.com/story/worlds-largest-humanitarian-crisis-basically-blacked-western-media/
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