Statement: A Massacre Committed in Darkness

January 23rd, 2022

The night between January 20th and January 21st brought unbeknownst horror to the people of Yemen. In Hodeidah, a telecommunications centre was deliberately bombarded by the Saudi-American aggression, close to a soccer field where a youth team was playing, killing three children and isolating the entire Yemeni country of 29 million people from any access to the global internet.

As if that wasn’t enough for these bloodthirsty vultures and their imperialist dreams, the Saudi-American Coalition went on to bombard a detention centre in Yemen’s northern province of Saadah, killing (at least) 60 innocent civilians. The center was housing migrants. On top of this, the Saudi-American Coalition went on to pound and bombard the Yemeni capital Sana’a for more than three hours nonstop, as well as bombardments in some of Yemen’s eastern provinces.

All happening within one night under complete cover, as the collective voice of 29 million Yemeni citizens was silenced. On the early morning of January 21st, the Yemeni people woke up to the news of at least 300 of their compatriots dead and an even greater number of wounded.

The fact that such egregious news coming out of the poorest Arab country in the world isn’t plastered on every major newspaper speaks volumes. We understand that the liberal individualist world does not care when it is about brown people in the Global South being speared in the heart and chest by the bayonet of Imperialism. Two decades of post-9/11 Islamophobia has blinded the entire “International Community”. The crimes committed by the Saudi-American aggression on January 21st, and for the past seven years against the impoverished Yemeni people, is being brushed aside.

Brushed aside as a “civil war”, hence not considered the business of the west. Brushed aside as a “sectarian conflict” or a ”proxy war” between Iran and Saudi Arabia. In their wretched, displaced worldview the Yemeni people are merely considered pawns in a larger geopolitical board game.

What is worse, in our eyes, is the collective absence of any historical background knowledge when it comes to Yemen. Some People happen to believe the war on Yemen began within an isolated, contemporary context. It did not. For decades, the Yemeni people have had to fight and toil to gain their independence. They kicked out the Ottomans in the early 1900s, overthrew the Saudi-backed Imam in 1965, and kicked out the British colonialists from Aden in 1967. If that wasn’t enough, they have had to endure intense blackmailing and constant Saudi interference in its affairs, and when a leader emerges that opposes Saudi interests, he’s immediately murdered. It happened to President Ibrahim Al-Hamdi of North Yemen in 1977.

Yemen is a poor country because Empire has kept it poor and done everything in its might and power to prevent the country from lifting itself up. They have done so through the installation of puppet governments and puppet rulers in the Presidential Palace, imposing the will not of the Yemeni people, but the will of American, Saudi and Emirati interests.

Yemen is facing genocide and has done so for the past seven years. more than 20 million people live on the brink of starvation. The country is suffering under a military blockade upheld by the Saudi-American Coalition. Medical equipment, foodstuffs, diesel and gasoline are barred from entry. The Yemeni oil tanker FSO Safer is corroding in the Red Sea, unable to dock at Hodeidah port. Why? Because such have the Saudis and the Americans decided. The Yemeni people refused to bow and are now being punished.

The war on Yemen is one huge act of corporal punishment. And the world does not care.

The world cries foul when Yemen even as much as dares to fight back using its arsenal of missiles and drones, targeting areas of financial importance to these reactionary gulf statelets. The aggressors return the “favour” by murdering entire families and levelling entire towns. A war of unequal power dynamics is framed as a civil war between equal actors. Yemen is going through its hardest time in years. As of the publication of this statement, it has been more than three days since Yemen’s internet access was cut off.

The Organization of Solidarity with the Yemeni Struggle, resting on a firm belief in the right of oppressed peoples to armed struggle against imperialist aggression and colonialism, condemns on its strongest terms the Saudi-American massacre of Yemeni civilians on January 21st, the global silence and neglect of the Yemeni people’s suffering, and the global inaction to show support with the Yemeni people’s demands and its legitimate armed struggle. If you care for the suffering of Yemen, it is about time you speak up. Or would it take the deliberate genocide of 29 million people for anyone to pay attention?

Released by the Organization of Solidarity with the Yemeni Struggle,

January 23rd, 2022AD