Yemeni Nobel Laureate Criticizes Saudi Arabia, UAE for Occupying Yemen

TEHRAN (defapress) - Yemeni Nobel Peace laureate Tawakkol Karman called for an end to what she says is a military occupation of her country by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

News ID: 68557

Date: 08 February 2018 - 18:03

"The Saudi-Emirati occupation ... betrayed the Yemenis to exercise an ugly occupation and greater influence", Karman told Reuters by phone in an interview from Istanbul, Turkey.

She also said that Yemen’s fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, along with other top officials, were being kept under "house arrest" by Riyadh.

"They regard the Arab Spring as their first enemy and this is a strategic error they have fallen into ... I call on the two countries to reconcile with the Arab Spring, not to clash with it, because the future is a future of change, and the wheel of history does not roll backward."

Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by the coalition for almost three years but Riyadh has reached none of its objectives in Yemen so far.

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Arabian Peninsula country.

Over 14,000 Yemenis, including thousands of women and children, have lost their lives in the deadly military campaign.