NGOS urge Spain not to sell warships to Saudi Arabia
Acoalition of NGOS on Wednesday urged Spain not to sign off on a planned sale of warships to Saudi Arabia during an upcoming visit to Madrid by the kingdom’s crown prince.
The “Arms Under Control” collective, which includes Amnesty International, Oxfam and Greenpeace, also called on Spain to stop exporting arms to the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen, where thousands of civilians have been killed, The Local Spain reported.
During his stay in Spain on Thursday, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will meet King Felipe VI and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy – “a meeting during which bilateral agreements will be signed,” read the Spanish government’s agenda, without giving more details.
Spain’s loss-making shipyards are placing a lot of hope on the planned sale of five corvettes, which has reportedly been under negotiation for two years.
But rights groups have denounced it, saying the warships could be used in Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen.
On Wednesday, the NGOS coalition asked the royal palace and Spanish government “not to promote the signature of Spanish company Navantia’s contract to build five corvettes... for the Saudi Army and to end arms exports to Saudi Arabia”.
It also called on Spain “to join a growing number of countries like Germany, Sweden, Norway or Belgium that have stopped exporting arms to the Saudi coalition” fighting in Yemen, which also includes countries like the United Arab Emirates.
The Saudi crown prince’s trip to Spain will come hot on the heels of a three-day official visit to France and after a tour lasting several weeks of the United States, Britain and Egypt, where the self-styled modernizer signed multimillion-dollar deals.
The tour, however, has been overshadowed by the war on Yemen, which has killed tens of thousands while unsuccessfully trying to restore Yemen’s Riyadh-aligned government.
During his stay in the UK, high-profile British anti-war groups Stop the War Coalition and Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) held rallies against the kingdom’s war crimes and rights violations at home.
Ahead of his visit to France, a French lawyer filed a lawsuit in a Paris court against him, accusing him of complicity in torture in Yemen.
Prominent rights groups have also urged French President Macron to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia and pressure the regime over its war crimes and human rights abuses.
Macron on Tuesday defended France’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia, saying, “France has adopted a very specific arms process, with an existing commission that has reinforced its rules of distribution whereby all sales of military equipment are analyzed on a case-by-case basis and on the basis of reinforced criteria that reflect respect for international humanitarian law and the risk of harm to civilian populations.”
Since 2015, the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, hitting civilian areas, has so far killed more than 13,600 people, displaced more than three million and led to a humanitarian crisis, although the alliance denies ever doing so intentionally.