Italian Workers Refuse to Load
Generators On Weapons-Laden Saudi Ship
Saudi ship (Twitter)
Highlights
The Bahri-Yanbu
vessel loaded arms in Antwerp, Belgium earlier this month but was prevented
from picking up another batch of weapons in the French port of Le Havre
following protests by human rights groups.
Activists said the
weapons violate a UN treaty because they could be used against civilians in
Yemen, where a Saudi-led military coalition has engaged in a brutal war against
Iran-backed Houthis since 2015.
The Saudi-led
offensive in Yemen has killed thousands of civilians and has been condemned
worldwide by human rights groups.
Protesters
gathered in Genoa with banners that read "No to war".
Unions tried to
have the boat banned from Italy but the ship docked despite the attempts.
However, workers refused to load two generators aboard the Saudi boat due to
their possible use in the Yemen conflict.
"We will not
be complicit in what is happening in Yemen," union leaders said in a
statement, with port officials confirming the generators were blocked on the
quay.
The vessel will
leave Genoa for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Monday.
The coalition is
comprised of several Sunni Arab countries but its pillars are Saudi Arabia and
the UAE, both of whom have since 2015 been using warplanes to strike targets in
Yemen.
Since then,
fighting has killed tens of thousands of people, most of them civilians,
displaced millions and sparked what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian
crisis.
The Saudi-led
coalition last week said it would put on trial military personal suspected of
being behind deadly air strikes on civilians in Yemen, where the UN has
documented numerous human rights violations.
"The judicial
authorities have begun the procedures of the trial, and the judgements [ sic]
will be announced once they acquire the peremptory status," coalition
spokesperson Turki Al-Maliki, quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency, told
journalists in London.
He said the trials
would be based on the results of investigations by the Joint Incident
Assessment Team (JIAT), which the coalition established but says operates
independently.
The cases being
investigated include a 2018 air strike on a school bus in the northern region
of Dahyan that killed at least 40 children.
They also include
a raid on a wedding party the same year in the Houthi-controlled Bani Qais area
of Hajja province, which left 20 dead.
A 2016 deadly
bombing of a hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders (MSF), in which 19
people were killed, has also been used as evidence of civilian infrastructure
being targeted by the coalition.
The coalition is
committed to holding responsible "violators... of international humanitarian
law - if any - in accordance with the laws and regulations of each country in
the coalition", Maliki added.
The number of
suspects and their nationalities were not immediately known.
This article
has been adapted from its original source.
Via SyndiGate.info
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