PRESS RELEASE
Intervention for Yemen in Geneva UN Human Rights Council
June 19, 2017 (EIRNS)—A presentation against the Yemen war was delivered at a side event of the UN Human Rights Council 35th Session by Schiller Institute activist Ulf Sandmark, speaking as part of the Yemen Solidarity group from Sweden. The speech, "Use of Terrorism in Global Strategic Irregular Warfare as a Human Rights Violation in Yemen," was turning the tables against those who claim that the legitimate government of Yemen in Sana’a are terrorists. The culprits are those who are pushing a regime-change policy by trying to impose an illegitimate president on the nation of Yemen, using terrorists for this purpose as a method of global strategic irregular warfare. Sandmark called for the start of a new Working Group to be set up under the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to investigate those who push global strategic irregular warfare.
“The use of terrorists as foot soldiers for regime-change is an HR crime against the victims. But it is also a HR crime as it impedes the development potentials for Yemen to join the New Silk Road. This war also impedes the development potentials of the world Silk Road development. The cases I used for such HR crimes started off with the support for terrorists for regime-change purposes by Sweden and further on by Norway, U.K., U.S.A., and their allies.”
The seminar against the Yemen war was held June 16, 2017, as a side event of the UN Human Rights Council 35th Session in Geneva. The seminar was organized by the Yemen Solidarity Association from Sweden and the international network of Yemen activists, Yemen Solidarity, together with the hosting Iraqi Development Organization, as a non-governmental organization (NGO) side event at the Office of the High Commissioner for HR (OHCHR) in Geneva. The three speakers from Yemen Solidarity were chairman Roland Hedayat, vice chairman Walid Almufti, and Ulf Sandmark, who were joined by two speakers from the Yemen Association in Germany, journalist Ebrahim Hedyan, and Yemeni HR activist Ayesh Awad.
Roland Hedayat in his prelsentation brought up the illegitimacy of the military aggression against Yemen, which has no basis whatsoever in UN Security Council Resolution 2216. The war has to be stopped immediately so that the great humanitarian crisis can be addressed, especially to stop the explosive spread of epidemic cholera, as well as the huge famine.
Ebrahim Hedyan reported on the HR violations against the journalists of Yemen, and Ayesh Awad continued bringing up the vast destruction of Yemeni civil society, and showed a short video with a message from the Children of Yemen.
The seminar was attended by 30 people and was on a direct video link with Yemen. The event was part of a broader intervention on behalf of Yemen which included statements (1.5 minutes) to the full HR Council with the representatives of all the member nations listening. Among the five activists delivering the statements was Schiller Institute friend, retired French Col. Alain Corvez. Also, Mr. Abdulhameed Dashti, MP from Kuwait, intervened against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and caused the representative of Saudi Arabia to try to block his statement. Together with demonstrations, these interventions in total became quite a strong NGO intervention to stop the war on Yemen.
