Yemen’s Ansarullah has slammed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres's decision to add the resistance movement to its annual blacklist of parties violating children's rights, describing the measure as ‘disgraceful’.
Ansarullah’s political bureau announced in a statement on Saturday night that “Guterres’s move produced convincing proof that the UN is simply a worthless platform exploited by major powers to distort facts and confiscate the rights of oppressed nations.”
“The United Nations would better remain neutral, and not act as a mouthpiece for the coalition of aggressors and repeat their nonsense and ridiculous statements,” it noted.
Ansarullah’s inclusion in the blacklist of states and groups that violate children’s rights is "unjust, invalid and disconnected from real-world facts", the statement said.
“The United Nations severed its ties with our nation and sided with the aggressor coalition by such a classification,” it added.
Ansarullah touched on thousands of videos that have shown horrific massacres of Yemeni children by Saudi Arabia over the past years.
“If the UN Secretary-General has an iota of humanity, he should not seek a second term in office than to sell his conscience at a cheap price. Yemeni children know who is killing them with planes and blockades,” the statement said.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with al-Masirah television network on Friday, Ansarullah spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Salam also censured the UN decision.
“The UN is acting in favor of major powers, and exhibits clear bias. The aggressor countries are committing the most heinous crimes against Yemeni children, and yet they were not included in the list,” he said.
Abdul-Salam said when Ansarullah reacted angrily to the removal of Saudi Arabia from a list of groups violating children's rights, former UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the kingdom was exerting “unacceptable” undue pressure and had threatened to cut some UN funding.
“The UN decisions fall within the framework of improper political criteria and accusations,” the Ansarullah spokesman said.
New retaliatory drone strikes
On Saturday, Yemeni forces conducted more than a dozen drone strikes against various targets deep inside Saudi Arabia in retaliation for its devastating military campaign and brutal siege against their country.
Saudi state TV said the kingdom’s air defense units intercepted and destroyed six armed drones launched by the Yemeni forces.
Spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces Brigadier General Yahya Saree had earlier announced in a post that a major airbase in Saudi Arabia’s southern region of Asir had come under a drone strike.
He said the Yemeni armed forces and fighters from allied Popular Committees used a domestically-manufactured Qasef-2K (Striker-2K) combat drone to hit targets inside King Khalid airbase near the Saudi city of Khamis Mushait early on Saturday.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the US and regional allies, launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing Ansarullah.
Yemeni armed forces and allied Popular Committees have, however, gone from strength to strength against the Saudi-led invaders, and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.
The Saudi-led military aggression has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions more. The Saudi war has also destroyed Yemen's infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases across the country.