US aiding, abetting war crimes in Yemen: Activist

Press TV has interviewed Kim Sharif, director of Human Rights for Yemen in London, about US Secretary of State John Kerry reiterating Washington's support for Saudi Arabia’s ongoing war on Yemen, which has so far claimed the lives of at least 8,000 people.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What do you make of US Secretary of State’s comments basically supporting Saudis onslaught on the Yemeni people, that we are talking about now more than 8,000 people mostly civilians have lost their lives since March of last year?  

Sharif: This is not very interesting admission on the part of the US administration clearly. What they are saying is that they are aiding and abetting war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Yemen. In addition, recently Amnesty International has reported couple of days ago that cluster bombs have been used in densely populated areas in the Sana’a and Sa’ada areas.

So that basically means the US is guilty of these crimes and on average a thousand people are being killed in Yemen a month. It has been ten months they have not achieved anything really. The US needs to be focusing its attention on combating terrorism which is what it is telling the world when in fact it is being embedded, having a relationship with the same regime that is supplying that very terror regime to it.

Now the interesting point is that 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Why is the US causing the whole world to have a breakdown in the rule of law in the international platform is incomprehensible to most of us who consider ourselves to be civilized societies because the effect of the US behavior, the US regime’s behavior in relation to Yemen and many other parts of the world is clearly thuggery, it has nothing to do with civilization, it has more to do with barbarism.

So in other words the US regime is saying openly that it is a barbaric regime that supports a system that is worse than the Nazi regime of Hitler of the Second World War and it is quite happy to actually help the Saudi regime target hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure. In other words the US is saying, putting its hands up and saying we are happy to admit to that we are going to commit war crimes, genocidal crimes against humanity and pedal some pathetic lies to the world about combating terrorism when in fact they are not.

Press TV: In your perspective, has the United States lost its legitimacy to talk about terrorism, to talk about human rights when time and time again we continue to see Washington support these unbelievably hostile and horrific types of regimes that are doing all kinds of things to their people and also in various regions of the world? Does the United States still have any legitimacy left?

Sharif: I am afraid not. It hasn’t and the regime by its own spokesperson today officially has admitted it that well, you see post Iraq war rectal feeding, renditions, doing all kinds of horrific abuses of human rights, Guantanamo Bay, all of that was a huge scar on the reputation of the US as a nation that calls itself a civilized, modern nation that fights for democracy. Actually in reality it turned out to be on the contrary. It is a very barbaric regime that is so ruthless and brutal that if you look at its own prison systems, the Chicago scandal, I am sure you have heard about of how they were abusing and killing, massacring large numbers of people of African-Caribbean background.

Now the US has dirtied its hand with all kinds of irregular behavior. It has established a system of chaos in the international platform and there is no rule of law, there is absolute chaos because of the US’s persistent, consistent behavior as a barbaric regime that cannot be trusted. It cannot be trusted nor can it be trusted in relation to the fight against terrorism because clearly the whole world has now identified the source of terrorism and that is that regime that it has come out with today and openly declared its support for it.

So in other words the question is, is the US supporting terrorism or fighting terrorism? The answer must be it is supporting terrorism because if it is fighting terrorism it would confront it head-on and it is not doing that unfortunately. So I think the moral compass has been lost post 9/11, Afghan and Iraq wars and now the nail has been put on the coffin finally. We now know that the US regime is no different from the butchers of Arabia, they are the same. That is why they understand each other. They speak the same language. They are singing from the same hymnbook. That is the point.

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