[19/11/2020 01:33]

RIYADH-SABA
Yemen’s Information Minister Muammar al-Eryani said designating the Houthis as a “terrorist organization is an entailment” of any respect to human rights principles, given the militants’ habitual atrocities against civilians.

In a comment on the Brookings Institution’s ‘Ending the Yemen war is both a strategic and humanitarian imperative’ report
which argues against the designation, al-Eryani told Saba, the militia have been committing horrific “acts against civilians in their regions of control, practicing religious sectarian incitement, attacking neighboring countries, endangering international shipping, promoting slogans of violence and hatred.”

“During the [six] years of the war, the militia committed unprecedented atrocities against civilians: thousands of crimes of killing, displacing, kidnapping, disappearing and torturing civilians; recruiting children to warfronts, planting landmines indiscriminately; and blowing up houses and looting properties of oppositionists.”

He said that the calls for Yemeni “submission to the militia as a de facto authority” reveal an ignorance of how bloody the militia and of its religious background which enshrines terrorism against oppositionists and minorities.”

He noted that any halting of the war begins with “halting the Iranian interference and the Houthi serious engagement in peace talks, which will come only by political and military pressure.”

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