Activists in the UK organized a mass protest in front of the High Court in London, calling on their government to stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which are used in the war of aggression against Yemen.
Participants in the demonstration held up billboards stating that Britain was breaking the law by selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, given the evidence that the Saudis have committed repeated violations of human rights and international law in the war against Yemen.
The activists, who dubbed themselves a “campaign against the arms trade,” said the London government had made a mistake in its 2020 decision to resume issuing permits to supply military equipment to Saudi Arabia.
The campaign stressed that granting licenses to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia is illegal. There is a clear risk that the weapons could be used to carry out serious violations of international humanitarian law against the Yemeni people.
The campaign called on the British High Court to rule on the illegality of the government’s decision to continue granting export permits to Saudi Arabia and refusing to suspend existing permits.
The US-backed Saudi-led coalition has been waging a war of aggression against Yemen since March 2015. The coalition has committed thousands of crimes that killed tens of thousands of people, and their economic blockade brought the country to the brink of mass-famine and created the largest humanitarian disaster in the world according to the United Nations.
