Dr. Marandi Slams UN for Inaction on Saudi Genocide against Yemen

President of Medical Sciences Academy Dr. Seyed Alireza Marandi in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon lashed out at the world body for keeping mum on Riyadh’s savage crimes against the innocent people in Yemen, and stressed the Iranian physicians’ readiness to rush to the Yemeni people’s aid.
“During the past two months we have, as you know, been witnessing inhumane crimes in Yemen. Unfortunately, because of extreme censorship, the actual depth of these crimes has not been shown,” Dr. Marandi said in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Saudi Arabia has been bombing Yemen in the last 54 days to bring its ally, fugitive president Mansour Hadi, back to power. The airstrikes have killed, at least, 3,812 Yemenis, according to FNA’s independent tally. According to a recent report by Freedom House Foundation, most of the victims of the deadly Al Saud campaign are civilians, including a large number of women and children. Thousands of residential buildings have been destroyed, and hundreds of civil and public facilities were reduced to rubble as a result of the bombardments by Saudi warplanes on the Yemeni cities and towns, the group said.

In his letter, Dr. Marandi, a former Iranian Health Minister further said, “The Saudi regime is engaged in bombing cities; in the process, it is destroying infrastructure—including hospitals, schools and relief facilities—and killing women, children, and innocent civilians. The injured and those left homeless are deprived of basic medical and health provision and are without safe places in which to seek shelter from the ongoing Saudi military campaign.”

“Even international aid organizations have been prevented from helping civilian casualties; a plane carrying Red Crescent medical aid for injured children and women was forced to cancel its humanitarian missions as Saudi air forces bombed the airport,” he added.

“As the crimes of the Saudi regime increase day by day, the international community has remained silent and failed to condemn this military attack against a sovereign nation,” Marandi said.

“It is wholly disappointing that the United Nations, a body that was established to resolve international conflict, is indifferent to the suffering of the people of Yemen,” he continued.

“The actions of the Saudi Regime are nothing short of genocide, and will be remembered in history as such. This episode will also be remembered as a failure of the United Nations through its silence and inaction. We therefore expect the Secretary General to take immediate and effective action against the Saudi Regime to prevent further loss of life and injury to civilians and destruction of civil infrastructure,” President of the Medical Sciences Academy underscored.

“The Academy of Medical Sciences of the Islamic Republic of Iran declares that the Iranian medical community is ready to help and assist the oppressed people of Yemen in any way possible,” Dr. Marandi concluded.

Late in April, Saudi jet fighters shooed away three Iranian cargo planes from Yemen’s airspace. But in the third case they bombed the Sana’a airport control tower and runway seven times to prevent the Iranian defying pilot from landing. The Iranian civilian plane was carrying humanitarian aids, including medical equipment, for the Yemeni people who have been under the Saudi-led airstrikes for two months.

Yet, Iran has underlined that it would continue dispatch of relief aid to the war-ravaged Muslim nation. An Iranian ship carrying humanitarian aid supplies, relief workers and peace activists from several countries left the Southern Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas for Yemen on May 11. The vessel is now in the Gulf of Aden, and will berth in the port city of al-Hudayda in Southern Yemen in the Red Sea after passing through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

The Saudi-led coalition has laid siege to Yemen in the air and on the sea, but Iran says it has coordinated aid delivery with the UN.

Meantime, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei strongly condemned the western powers for supporting terrorism in the region, and said that the US is the mastermind and main sponsor of aggression against Yemen.
“Today Yemen has turned into the scene of massacre of innocent children and women caused by pseudo-Muslim countries, but its main mastermind and orchestrator is the US,” Ayatollah Khamenei said on Saturday.

Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated that the regrettable situation in Yemen sets yet another example of the falsehood of the US officials’ allegations about their so-called efforts to maintain regional security.

He referred to the Yemeni, Bahraini and Palestinian people as oppressed nations, reminding that the innocent people in Yemen are the target of daily bombs and missiles strikes now.