The documentary, released in July 2017, focuses on the complete lack of compensation for workers in Yemen due to the conflict and its effects on their daily lives: “[It was] the first time all employees in the country receive […] coupons because we have not received a salary,” says one man interviewed in a grocery store. Garbage workers were not paid, leaving the streets filled with garbage that has caused bacteria to collect and infiltrate the water. This has effectively led to a cholera epidemic, leaving many hospitalized for extreme dehydration. According to the World Health Organization, there are over 300,000 cases of cholera and 1,600 accounts of death by cholera as of mid-2017. According to a nurse interviewed in the documentary, the number of malnutrition cases has doubled since the war began.

Miryama Abdulaziz, one of the hosts, explained that the event’s goal was to shed light on what is happening in Yemen, and raise funds for Mona Relief. This organization focuses on relief, giving people food, medicine, blankets, and other basic supplies.

Abdulaziz further described that, “each family receives a basket for the price of $30-35 USD, [which] contains wheat, sugar, rice, oil, and powdered milk — enough for a family of six to eight people for one month.” Since 2015, the organization itself has been “able to support more than 40,000 people as of July 2017.”

After Abdulaziz’s intervention, Ahmed described his experience in Yemen during the 2011 uprising.

“The perfect places for us to go [for protests] were the universities where more active young people were. […] Everything we did was voluntary, we worked hard together to build tents and to have sit-ins, but the government cracked down, and with more people being hurt or killed, the more international attention there was to our cause.”

Ahmed then recounted the political events that led to the humanitarian disaster that plagues Yemen today. Saudi Arabia and the US campaigned an initiative to propose that the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, step down. They offered Saleh immunity according to the agreement, and proposed that his vice president Abdul Mansour Hadi lead the transitional period as president, from 2012 to 2014. Saleh, unwilling to lose power, formed an alliance with the Houthis, a political religious group from Northern Yemen in 2015. He managed to take over Sana’a, the country’s capital city. Hadi took refuge in the port city of Aden causing the outbreak of the war.

In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates launched a military intervention to restore Hadi to power. But the war settled into a stalemate. “Officially the Houthis remain in control of Sanaa, the capital, and much of the North, while the Saudi-UAE coalition controls much of the South,” Ahmed added, “A comprehensive Saudi-UAE blockade and air campaign has caused famine conditions, the spread of communicable diseases such as cholera, and a wave of internal displacement.”

He then expanded on the flow of information in and out of Yemen: “both the Houthis and Saudi-UAE coalition tightly control access for journalists, with the media centering its attention on an Iranian-Saudi proxy war.” Saudi-backed media claims that Iran supports Houthis fighters, while the opposing side offers a vision of Saudi adventurism.

The war has four main axes of motion. Ahmed expanded on each of them: “the first and most familiar [axis] is essentially a northern conflict with forces aligned with former president Saleh and his former allies the Houthis, against the Saudi backed coalition forces loyal to the displaced transitional president Hadi. [Second, is the] strong separatist movement in the South of Yemen […] and a developing conflict between the secessionist southern transitional council and president Hadi’s government.The third axis is an increasingly active jihadist movement.”

The fourth axis revolves around regional politics. “Saudi Arabia and the UAE have different interests in [Yemen] […] with Saudi Arabia being more focused on airstrikes and targeting the Houthis, while the UAE is more focused on the South and supporting the separatist movement,” explained Ahmed.

Saudi airstrikes often target schools. “Youth in Yemen who comprise 75 per cent of the population are denied an education and meaningful action to political processes,” stated Ahmed, adding that the disappointed youth were left with few options but to join either side of the conflict.
Ahmed then put the conflict into geographic context, explaining that Saudi Arabia controls almost all land and sea borders surrounding Yemen. This means it controls everything that goes inside the country, sometimes taking medical equipment away in meticulous searches of humanitarian aid packages.

“One of the reasons [they do this] is to frustrate the people. The Houthis are not the actual government in the country, and the less services provided and the more frustrated the people are, […] [the] easier [it is] to get some kind of uprising against the Houthis from [the] inside.”

Jeeda, the president of the Syrian Students’ Association, explained the group’s involvement in the event. “The reason [why] many of us at the SSA were passionate about this initiative is because we empathize and understand the struggles with our brothers and sisters in Yemen. We can only imagine the suffering they’re going through and it’s very familiar to us with everything happening in Syria. There’s limited media coverage on it and no clubs in McGill are addressing this issue.”

Ahmed was “happy to share [his] own personal experience as an activist who is involved and who is living in Canada.” He explains that “the war is never talked about in the media and [he] wanted to bring some attention to it. However, he concludes “the most outstanding challenge is that Yemen has fractured in ways that will make any negotiated settlement extremely challenging and fragile. […] Reaching an end to the war will be difficult, and doing so will only be the first step in a very difficult reconstruction process.”

The post McGill Syrian Students’ Association hold talk on Yemen appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Missions to break the siege did not begin with the FFC, but with the Free Gaza Movement. Heap clarified: “two voyages in [August and October] 2008 sailed to and from Gaza and brought medical supplies without any security risks, and without any harm to anyone.” But when the occupation’s military carried out operation “Cast Lead” from December 2008 to January 2009, Heap explained, “free Gaza voyages arriving during the operation came under attack, […] the navy began shooting and ramming boats, and it became very difficult and dangerous.”

The Israeli occupation is responsible for putting activists in danger, Heap stressed. “The only thing that makes [the voyages] difficult is the occupier’s violence.” This hostility is exemplified in the FCC’s first voyage in 2010, organized by the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH). Of the six ships sailing to Gaza, “the largest, the Mavi Marmara, was attacked and boarded in international waters by the occupation’s commandos, killing nine activists and injuring several others,” stated Heap. The attack received extensive media attention generating an international public outcry, and caused the occupation to temporarily ease the blockade on Gaza.

Heap then described Israeli tactics to intercept humanitarian boats en route to Gaza. “Before we encountered the occupation’s navy, we lost contact with satellite radio […] the satellite phones all got blocked. This is in itself an admission of guilt, the occupiers are saying they’re about to do something they don’t want the world to see, so they have to cut off all channels of communication to control the narrative. They boarded with armed commandos, but we are committed to non-violent resistance. They are not committed to nonviolence.”

Heap was detained along with the other activists present onboard, spending six days in jail.
Heap explained that “typically flotilla participants are deported after 24 to 48 hours because it’s a media liability to keep [Western] internationals in prison.”

“Before we encountered the occupation’s navy, […] the satellite phones all got blocked. This is in itself an admission of guilt, the occupiers are saying they’re about to do something they don’t want the world to see.”

 

Heap went on to say that the most important thing was that “we were not forgotten, [however] the dangers for the Palestinians in Gaza [are] being forgotten. If nothing else, these actions serve to remind the world that they are not forgotten. They may be forgotten by the governments of the world, but they are not forgotten by the people of the world.” With this, Heap underlined one of the main goals of the flotilla, “this is one of the reasons to sail, it reminds a captive people that they in their international prison are not forgotten.”

He also reminded the attendees that the “blockade itself remains illegal under international law […] the special Rapporteur for Human Rights in September 2011 said that there is no way the blockade of Gaza could be legal because it deprives a civilian population from the right of freedom of movement […] which is considered collective punishment under International Law and the Geneva Conventions, guaranteeing the freedom of movement for all people within their state.”

Heap then described the Estelle Flotilla in 2012 which stopped at various European ports, raising awareness in the cities. He explained, “we learned in that case about the importance of the pre-voyage. The last part of the voyage can be predictable when we’re intercepted by the occupier’s navy. When we meet people in a European communities we have an impact on that community.”

An alternative tactic to the flotillas was the Gaza’s Ark campaign from 2012-2015, which sought to challenge the blockade from the inside out. Heap explained, “Gaza’s Ark was a project to sail from inside Gaza out, to emphasize the fact that it’s not about us bringing stuff to Gaza, it’s about freedom of movement for Palestinians in Gaza.” Heap and his colleagues would “rebuild a fishing boat in Gaza, buy trade goods from Palestinians who wanted to trade with the world, and sail out to challenge the blockade. [We were] demanding freedom of movement and freedom of commerce […] and the project sold about $25,000 worth of export goods.”

The Gaza’s Ark campaign addressed the plight of Gaza’s fishermen, who “since 2012 and in fact earlier, suffered from the occupier pushing back the very narrow band of waters where Palestinians are allowed to fish. Sometimes it’s six nautical miles, sometimes it’s as little as four nautical miles. Keep in mind that any other coastal people in the world has a minimum of 12 nautical miles of territorial waters and normally a 20 nautical mile economic zone.” Heap stated “many end up in the occupation’s prisons for the crime of fishing. For the crime of trying to feed their families.”

Heap went on to express his support for the Women’s Flotilla which sailed in 2016 that “underlined the aspects of the blockade which particularly affect women […] and the role women play in the resistance and the survival of their societies.”

George Ghabrial, a member of SPHR, said “it’s important to remind the McGill community at large that [the struggle for Palestinian liberation] is bigger than just McGill or a campus. We have a room full of people who are relatively aware of the issue today thinking about the occupation of Gaza. It inspires people to think a little bit differently and maybe empowers them to take action in different ways they hadn’t done so before in their communities and in that way spread more internationally.”

Regarding future flotilla plans, Heap stated that “this year, we’re planning a sail called ‘A Just Future for Palestine’ and the flotilla will be called ‘Al Awdah’ [The Return] with representatives from all over Europe, Malaysia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States as well as several [representatives from] international organizations. We need to continue to spread the international nature of this. The purpose is to break the media blockade and to reach people with the story of what’s happening in Gaza.”

“It inspires people to think a little bit differently and maybe empowers them to take action in different ways […] and in that way spread more internationally.”

The post SPHR hosts discussion on the Freedom Flotilla Coalition appeared first on The McGill Daily.