Shabbir Hassanally: World oblivious about carnage in Yemen

Press TV interviewed Shabbir Hassanally, an activist and Islamic scholar in London, about Amnesty International calling on the UN Human Rights Council to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its “gross human rights violations.”

A rough transcription of the interview follows.

Press TV: First of all, Amnesty International’s calls have been echoed previously before by different rights bodies as well as many human rights activists as far as Saudi Arabia’s human rights record goes. Now this is interesting though considering that Saudi Arabia is the chair of the Human Rights Committee over there, so what is Amnesty hoping to achieve?

Hassanally: It is very interesting. Saudis, like you said, the chair of the Human Rights Commission sadly, because the criminal who runs my country, Cameron, essentially worked very hard to make them that.

I think Amnesty is not doing a bad thing. At least it is getting public opinion out there, it is letting people know that, 'Look! There are war crimes happening, there is carnage happening.' I think the situation in Yemen is in some ways worse than the situation in Palestine, because no one is talking about Yemen. The only channels that I have seen covering Yemen at all has been Press TV, al-Alam, al-Manar and people like this.

If you look at the mainstream media, the BBC, the CNN, all of these, they say nothing and in this vein it might be useful that Amnesty has come out and said something because that might prod someone at CNN or BBC or one of these channels to at least run a small piece on what is going on because, really, the plight of the people in Yemen is absolutely tragic. The report you were reading earlier, it said they are using banned, internationally banned, munitions like cluster weapons, God knows they are probably using weapons that Israel has provided them, that America has provided them like the DIME weapon, like white phosphorus, like everything, anything that could possibly be there.

We all know that Saudi has been on a big spending spree buying a lot of weapons, sadly again a lot of them from my country because my government is so in the pocket of these people and it is a very tragic thing but I think Amnesty has not done a bad thing by at least making a small, a small little voice, if you like, to try and get people to at least look in this direction and see that, 'hold on a minute!', there is thousands of people being massacred using the most terrible weapons in Yemen and yet the world is sitting around not really caring and this is bizarre in this day and age. After the UN, which was an organization that allegedly was created to prevent such a genocide, is sitting back and is allowing the criminal to turn around and be the head of the human rights group that is supposed to condemn it.

Honestly if you read this in fiction you would think this is far-fetched.

Press TV: As you have just also mentioned it is not just the Saudi regime, it is being backed by the Western governments, etc. It is a whole movement per se that is exploiting the Middle Eastern region for its own interest at the expense of the civilians and their livelihoods. However, one has to wonder how long can this continue?

Hassanally: Again it is interesting you are asking that question and a few of us were discussing the same question a couple of days ago, and I do not believe it is going to last for much longer. I mean “much” is a very relative term. It has already been a year, it could be another couple of years but ultimately if we look strategically at the whole scenario, Saudi has achieved nothing, absolutely nothing. The only thing it has achieved is now it is going [into] debt. It is now having to go with the begging bowl to the various Western powers and tell them, 'Please give me money because I have run out, I have overspent.'

Yemen, on the other hand, we all know Yemen was one of the poorest countries, it was definitely the poorest country in the Arab region. Yemen has, among the Arab people, among the Muslims of the region, among the people who are actually aware, the free people of the world, Yemen has really achieved a very high public relations win, if you like. Granted, we know that the mainstream media is not talking about it but Alhamdulillah (Praise be to God) through the works of Press TV and other channels, other like-minded channels and as well as things like social media, YouTube, all of this, people are aware of what is going on, people are not completely oblivious and the battle of “hearts and minds” that we have the Americans talking about all the time, I believe this is firmly in the hands of the Yemeni movement, Ansarullah, and the Popular Committees and all of this, because they have been standing firm, they have not capitulated, they have not given up, they are taking territory and it is also very well known that the people who are allied to the Saudi and the so-called GCC coalition, if you like, this coalition of the Emirates, the shopping mall with the flag and Qatar being the TV channel with the flag and all of these despotic regimes, they are allied firmly with al-Qaeda and Daesh.

It has been proven, so much evidence has come out of Yemen to say that al-Qaeda and Daesh are working alongside this Mansour Hadi fellow and alongside the people who are loyal to the Saudi regime against the people of Yemen and I think the ultimate victory will be for the Yemeni people Inshallah (God willing) but it will not be without a cost.

The number of people who will be killed will sadly, I believe, grow because the world is oblivious, the powers that be are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs not caring at all about the carnage that is happening, but they need to understand something that what goes around does come around and a day will come when the Saudi regime is no longer useful to these Western powers and Yemen is resurgent and they will fall into the same trap, the Westerners will fall into the same trap they fell into with Islamic Republic of Iran, where they turned around and they supported the despot Shah and worked to keep him in there and when the Revolution happened, the leadership of the Revolution said, 'Look, we are not interested in you, as far as we are concerned death to you. You are someone who has done nothing but harm us. We have nothing to do with you, with the administration.' Of course the people are different. This must always be made very clear but it is a very, very sad situation but ultimately the victory will always be with the oppressed. The victory will always be with the resistance and Yemen is a solid part of the resistance, Ansarullah is a very solid part of the resistance and we salute them.

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