Yemenis rally shows Saudi campaign’s failure: Activist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Shabbir Hassanally, an activist and political commentator, about Yemeni people holding a huge demonstration to express their approval of the formation of the Higher Political Council and the reopening of the parliament in the crisis-hit country.

Here is a rough transcription of the interview:

Press TV: Almost a year and a half of daily Saudi airstrikes targeting mostly residential areas and killing nearly 10,000 Yemenis, most of them civilians, and people have turned out in huge numbers to show their support for a new Yemeni government body to run their country, not one imposed upon them by Riyadh, your thoughts.

Hassanally: I think this is, like your report said, it is a resounding referendum in favor of Yemen and completely against the Saudi and indeed global onslaught that Yemen has been suffering. It furthers goes to emphasize that the Saudi campaign, the global campaign against Yemen is completely impotent, it is a failure. All it is doing is committing mass murder and nothing else, it is not achieving anything. This entire war on Yemen has achieved nothing on the part of the Saudis and their so-called allies, the various oil fields and shopping malls that have decided to develop flags.

So this is again to show the world that the Yemeni people will not be pushed around and treated like slaves by these Takfiri, corrupt, dirty, Saudi monarchs who have no legitimacy on the face of this earth.   

Press TV: Why do you think Riyadh is so adamant on having the last say on who runs Yemen and to what extent do you think they are willing to continue to destroy this country’s infrastructure and kill its civilians to get what they want?

Hassanally: Again this comes back down to the idea of arrogance. When someone is a bully, when someone is arrogant, they have this opinion that they are better than everyone else and everyone must listen to them and every time someone makes resistance against them, they feel like hurt, they feel like how is this person making resistance and when that resistance is effective, then they will start calling all their friends and say, ‘These are terrorists, these are evil, they are threatening the world and everything’ but the reality is that America needs to listen really hard over here because America keeps talking about democracy and if America really wants to talk about democracy it needs to support the Yemeni uprising, it needs to completely remove any support it has from the Saudis and the Israelis and the UAE and all of these little corrupt entities that have been bombing Yemen because the people of Yemen have decided that they do not want Saudi involvement in their daily affairs, in their foreign policy, in their lives. They want to decide that themselves which is why they have given the Supreme Political Council their complete support and backing.

For America now to turn around and keep supplying weapons to Saudi, even for England to keep supplying weapons to Saudi and others to commit this genocide on Yemen is further evidence, if any was required, that these entities have no interest in democracy. This is all just lies. This is a veneer and the reality is that they are slaves, they are working completely for the military industrial complex, for the oligarchs and for the people who want to govern the world in a particular way, for the New World Order essentially, and this project is failing because the people of Yemen, the people of Syria, the people of Palestine, people of Lebanon, people of Iraq and the rest of the free world have said no and they are resisting   all of this corruption and God willing this resistance will be successful and the Saudis can try and shout and blow more people up, they will achieve nothing. Like the Israelis, the world now knows how impotent and corrupt and damage they are and the clock is ticking on all of these Arab and European Zionists.

Press TV: With respect to what is taking place, we are hearing more and more lawmakers out of Capitol Hill and Westminster speak up against the Saudi war on Yemen as atrocities are mounting there but yet these are two countries where the actual public knows very little about what is going on in Yemen through their mainstream media?

Hassanally: Well this is because the mainstream media is controlled by who? Mainstream media is not free and has no interest in giving the real news to people. It is controlled by a group of Zionists and people who have a neocolonialist who have an agenda to keep pushing the project of a New World Order and to keep the people subjugated to create a new feudal system, if you like, where people are slaves and this has been unsuccessful because of the alternative media, people like yourselves and others, people now know what is going on and yes, it is refreshing to see that some of the senators and Congress people in Capitol Hill are now making some noises but my problem is that the American regime needs to realize that talk is cheap. All of this is all happening, all of this that is being spilled - be it in Yemen, be it in Syria, be it in Palestine - is on the hands of the American and the American oligarchs because they are enabling it, they are allowing it to happen and the sooner America starts worrying about its own interest in reality and stops giving arms to psychopaths like the Saudis and the Israelis, the better the world will become.  

Press TV: Do you think Riyadh will ever have to answer for alleged war crimes it has committed in Yemen with the disproportionate amount of  civilian deaths that are just accumulating in that country?

Hassanally: I really hope that there will be some sort of Nuremberg-type trial where all of these Saudi people, Saudi government, Saudi royal family are held to account  but being realistic, I do not believe this is going to be the case anytime soon but inshallah (God willing), we live in hope.

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk