Prime Minister Liz Truss speaking in the House of Commons, London, to set out her energy plan to shield households and businesses from soaring energy bills. Picture date: Thursday September 8, 2022.
LIZ TRUSS’S premiership marks a “worrying turning point” for the war in Yemen, anti-arms campaigners have warned.
Protesters gathered outside Parliament earlier this week to draw attention to the new PM’s record of arming the Saudi-led coalition, which is attacking Yemen, during her tenure as international trade secretary between 2019 to 2021 – and to urge her to stop fuelling it.
In 2020, Ms Truss restarted arms sales to the Gulf state despite widespread evidence of war crimes in Yemen.
It came after she was forced to admit to the government that she had breached a court order banning UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, prompting calls for her to resign.
Since the bombing of Yemen began in March 2015, the British government has licenced at least £23 billion worth of weapons to the Saudi-led coalition, according to Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT).
British arms sales have been blamed for prolonging the devastating war, which has claimed the lives of more than 370,000 people and triggered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
CAAT handed an open letter, signed by over 7,000 people, to Downing Street on Wednesday calling on the new PM to stop arming the coalition and pledge more humanitarian support.
CAAT’s Amber Rose-Dewey accused Ms Truss of prioritising profit and trade over civilian lives.
“The imposition of Liz Truss as Prime Minister marks a worrying turning point for the war on Yemen, amongst other issues,” she said.
“Truss has made it clear in her tenure as secretary of state for international trade that she has little concern for the people of Yemen.”
Also at the demo was anti-arms campaigner and former South African ANC MP Andrew Feinstein, who said: “Anyone who feels empathy for the suffering in Ukraine must oppose the UK’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia which are causing even greater harm and devastation in Yemen.”
Ms Truss has also pushed for weapons sales to Ukraine, and has pledged to ramp up defence spending to 3 per cent of national income by the end of the decade, which analysts claim will cost £157bn.
Arms sales to Saudi Arabia were paused in 2019 following a Court of Appeal ruling that the British government had acted unlawfully by failing to assess whether the coalition had committed violations of international law.
But Ms Truss restarted the sales a year later, claiming that evidence of war crimes were “isolated incidents.”
