Hani al-Beidh, son of former Vice President of the Republic of Yemen Ali Salim Al-Beidh, has held the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) militia responsible for the marginalisation and targeting of southern Yemenis, against the background of its participation in the Riyadh-formed Presidential Council.
“When being in a partnership, you don’t know where you stand in it, [especially if you join] a political operation with parties, programs, and projects that are against you; [it means you agree to] bear with the oppression,” Hani al-Beidh said on his Twitter account.
Al-Beidh called on the STC to reject the current partnership within the Riyadh Council, and to condition “securing the interests of southerners in the existing political process and with a clear regional and international guarantee and recognition.”
Hani al-Beidh’s father, Ali Salim al-Beidh, was General Secretary of the Yemeni Socialist Party in the Democratic People’s Republic of Yemen, as South Yemen was officially called prior to unification with the North, and served as Vice President of Yemen following the 1990 merger. In 1994, he left the government in protest against President Ali Abdullah Saleh and led the Southern Yemeni secession revolt that eventually was defeated. He remains a leading figure in the Southern Yemen Movement known as Hirak. The original Southern Yemeni independence movement has a tense relation with the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council, despite officially sharing a desire to see greater autonomy or even independence of southern Yemen.
