Saudi arms make Britain guilty of war crimes

Britain needs to rethink its approach to the Yemen conflict, writes E Peek from Durban.

What is wrong with SA? Why do we always call international war criminals to our shore? We know UK-made weapons are among those claiming Yemeni lives. By continuing to supply Saudi Arabia with arms, the UK is complicit to war crimes.

Theresa May and the British government care more about making profits from arms sales than the humanitarian disaster in Yemen. They have sold cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia and know the Saudis are going to drop them on Yemen.

Since the war began in 2015, the UK has licensed billions worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, as well as further arms sales to the United Arab Emirates.

The conflict has led to even more suffering. About 1.8 million Yemeni children are acutely malnourished, there are more than one million suspected cases of cholera and 8.4 million Yemenis are on the brink of famine.

Collectively, the cost of the war has created what the UN has described as the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis”.

The Saudi coalition’s indiscriminate bombing has killed thousands of Yemeni civilians.

Yet the British government has been one of the strongest backers of the Saudis.

With no end in sight to this abusive war, the British government needs to rethink its approach to Saudi Arabia and the Yemen conflict.

It is time to send war criminals packing from our SA shores.