Wednesday 12 June 2019

Yemen? What Yemen Is That Then?

The Human Rights & Democracy report from the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office is always a riveting read but this year it has a special section on Yemen which could be a bit tricky for the UK Government.
If we can avoid mentioning Saudi Arabia at all we could avoid upsetting them and most importantly the £4.7 billion-worth of arms sales we got going with them.
Obviously we can't not mention that it is the UK selling them the weapons they use in the conflict so if we can explain that they is  'no risk that the weapons would be used to violate humanitarian law and we have confidence in the Saudi's dynamic targeting processes' and hope that nobody has noticed the UN investigative report which Saudi air strikes had caused the 6,100 verified civilian deaths in the country and air strikes had hit 'residential areas, markets, funerals, weddings, detention facilities, civilian boats and even medical facilities'.
If we can end with the line that we are 'continuing to lead international efforts to work towards an end to the conflict' then i think we can get away with it.

No comments: