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News ID: 42747
Publish Date : 11 August 2017 - 20:55

Injustice at UN Security Council





By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

This week gave the world an appalling view of United Nations’ "justice” in all its privilege and cognitive dissonance:
The United States and Saudi Arabia, a kingdom of terror that carries out mass executions of dissidents, beheads political activists, subjugates women, and supports extremist groups like ISIL and Al-Qaeda, were left off the hook at the UN Human Rights Council despite killing scores of innocent people in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
There are the same regimes that have launched an all-out war against Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, in alliance with the Persian Gulf oil monarchies and NATO. As a consequence, Yemen, after 19 months of savage bombardment of civil society, is facing a catastrophic crisis threatening mass starvation – all for the crime of wanting to determine its own fate.
Worse still, the warmongers are deliberately targeting and destroying Yemen’s ability to provide its own food in order to prop up a panicked, illegitimate ruler and starve the largely ignored Middle Eastern nation into submission in what constitutes one of the great war crimes of the 21st century. Any sound mind would now expect the UN to react to this human tragedy, to this U.S.-armed Saudis’ barbarism. On the contrary.
The UN has only condemned the war criminals and has even backed Saudi Arabia’s renewed membership on the Human Rights Council -  yet another link to a chain of international protocols broken with impunity. The awful irony in these two disparate narratives is that the UN is still under the illusion that it has "done something good and right.” It reeks of hypocrisy.
Never mind the bogus fear of "Iranians invading the Arabian Peninsula,” the people of Yemen have been living with very real fear of international terrorism and starvation for over 19 months now. Their original sin is that they said no to the interventionists, who are now using a "scorched earth strategy” in response, intentionally targeting food production and the agricultural sector in their indiscriminate bombing campaign.
Silly how the United Nations says Yemen could be facing an impending famine; characterises this as one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in the world; accuses Saudi-led forces of numerous war crimes, documenting scores of coalition attacks on a wide array of civilian areas; but then goes ahead and rolls the red carpet for Riyadh on its Human Rights Council!
Although no one at the Council is prepared to justify the bombing of civilian objects, few are prepared to hold Saudi Arabia to account and question its Western support with anything like the same burning zeal with which they lambast Iran and Russia for their support of Syria. The Council might be ‘shocked’ at the unfolding human tragedy in Yemen, but there is no plan at the moment to review its relations with Riyadh.
As is, the intentional destruction of civilian food supplies violates the Geneva Conventions, a major basis for international law. Saudi Arabia has not carried out these atrocities on its own either. London and Washington are leading the charge, even "double-tapping” funerals. They are morally compromised and complicit in the carnage. Their billions of dollars of weaponry, plus drone-fed logistical and intelligence support, including the aerial refueling of warplanes and the illegal blockade, have further exacerbated this crisis.