News Release

* Korea Policy: Disarm, Then Attack? * Saudi Bombing Yemen

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ELLEN BARFIELD, ellene4pj at yahoo.com
A long-time prominent activist with Veterans for Peace, Barfield was deployed with the U.S. military in Korea. She is helping organize a series of events at the Mall in D.C. displaying the human costs of war on Memorial Day. She noted the pattern of the U.S. government having a country — for example, Iraq and Libya — disarm, and then attacking them. See Wall Street Journal report: “North Korea Threatens to Call Off Summit, Calls Pence a ‘Political Dummy.’” See statement by Veterans for Peace: “End U.S. Military Exercises.” See from The Intercept from last year: “Trump Intel Chief: North Korea Learned From Libya War to ‘Never Give Up Nukes.’

KATHY KELLY, kathy at vcnv.org, @voiceinwild
Kelly is co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. She has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize

The media watch group FAIR just published the piece “Promoters of Saudi Prince as Feminist Reformer Are Silent on His Crackdown on Women.”

Kelly said today: “The Saudi government doesn’t seem to care about human rights in their country and they certainly don’t in Yemen which they have been subjecting to starvation and devastation of infrastructure.”

She just wrote the piece “Scourging Yemen,” which states: “The Saudis have an undeniable right to call on the UN to work toward preventing the Houthis from acquiring ballistic weapons that could be fired into Saudi Arabia, but the air, sea and water blockade now imposed on Yemen brutally and lethally punishes children who have no capacity whatsoever to affect Houthi policies. What’s more, the U.S. military, through midair refueling of Saudi and Emirati warplanes, is directly involved in devastating barrages of airstrikes while the UN Security Council essentially pays no heed.

“As Yemeni civilians’ lives become increasingly desperate, they become increasingly isolated, their suffering made invisible by a near-total lack of Western media interest or attention. No commercial flights are allowed into the Sana’a airport, so media teams and human rights documentarians can’t enter the areas of Yemen most afflicted by airstrikes. The World Food Program (WFP) organizes a weekly flight into Sana’a, but the WFP must vet passengers with the Saudi government. Nevertheless, groups working in Yemen, including Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Save the Children, Oxfam, and various UN agencies do their best to report about consequences of the Saudi-Emirati led coalition’s blockade and airstrikes.”

See from The Intercept: “U.S. Moves Forward With Multibillion-Dollar “Smart Bomb” Sale To Saudi Arabia and UAE Despite Civilian Deaths In Yemen.”