SANA’A (Dispatches) – The leader of Yemen’s popular Ansarullah resistance movement says the United States is deliberately prolonging the world’s worst humanitarian disaster in war-torn Yemen in order to reap huge profits from arms deals with Saudi Arabia and its regional allies, which are engaged in the devastating war on the country.
Abdul-Malik al-Houthi made the remarks in a televised address as people attended a ceremony in the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a to pay homage to late chairman of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council Saleh al-Sammad.
“The U.S. is trying to take advantage of the prolonged Yemen crisis. Washington has already made enormous profits from the war through arms deals [with the Riyadh regime and its allies]. U.S. statesmen intend to install a vassal state in Yemen so as to bring the nation under their control. They have no good intentions at all,” Houthi said.
He added that the U.S. continues to torpedo any initiative by the Sultanate of Oman and others to restore nationwide peace and stability to Yemen.
“The United States, Britain and the United Arab Emirates need to take on commitments in any future agreement. Yemen’s natural reserves have been occupied by the Saudi-led coalition of aggression, and the alliance is accountable for depriving Yemenis of sale proceeds,” Houthi said.
Saudi Arabia, in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistics support from the U.S. and other Western states, launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015.
Meanwhile, French energy giant Total has been sued in a new lawsuit by two individuals who were allegedly imprisoned and tortured at one of the company’s gas plants in Yemen.
In the lawsuit reported by media on Thursday, the lawyers of the two Yemeni men said their clients were jailed and tortured by Emirati forces at the company’s gas plant in Balhaf, Yemen.
Total must take responsibility for its failure to identify and prevent these men’s rights violations at the site run by a subsidiary of Total, the lawsuit demanded.
The French energy giant is the largest shareholder of Yemen LNG, the company operating the Balhaf gas liquefaction plant in the southern governorate of Shabwah, where the men were imprisoned in 2018 and 2019, lawyers said in the lawsuit filed by the lawyers at the Paris Court of Justice on Wednesday.
The lawyers reasoned that Total company had failed to identify and prevent human rights violations as required by a 2017 French law which makes large French companies publish an annual plan to establish and mitigate the impacts on human rights and the environment of their project work or those of their subsidiaries.
“Total must take responsibility for the violations committed by UAE forces in Balhaf,” said Alexis Thiry, legal advisor for the Geneva-based MENA Rights Group which represents the men.
In another development, Yemen has called on the United Nations and relevant international bodies to adopt proper measures against expulsion of Yemeni families by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from a strategic island southwest of Socotra, as part of plans to build a military base there under the supervision of Israeli military experts.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, Fisheries and Water Resource in the National Salvation Government roundly denounced the eviction of the residents of Abd al-Kuri island, which is part of the Socotra Archipelago and lies about 105 kilometers (65 miles) southwest of the island of Socotra, and their relocation to the coastal town of Hadibu.
The statement noted that displacement of locals and fishermen from the Yemeni island serves as a flagrant violation of Yemen’s sovereignty, and poses serious threats to the residents of nearby islands as well as the international navigation.