As Yemeni Kids Starve, Saudi War Refugees have Air Conditioned Tents
With over 150,000 internally displaced persons, Yemeni refugee camps are not only squalid but woefully understocked on water, food, medicine and tents. A shipment of high energy biscuits is a triumph. There are tens of thousands of refugees not in the camps who have recieved no support since the war broke out again in August. On the Saudi side, the tents are air conditioned, and the families receive three hot meals a day and $300/week cash payments. So if the Saudis are bombing Yemen, maybe they should send some air conditioned tents to those vicitims of their actions as well.
And no, the Houthis didn’t actually invade Saudi Arabia, that particular outpost on Smoky Mountian had traded hands several times between the Saudi, Yemen and rebel forces. The rebels took it from Yemeni soldiers and returned it the SA on the condition they didn’t loan it out again to Yemen to attack the rebels from Saudi soil, which they did.
NPR: Each of the 500 tents (for displaced Saudis) is air conditioned, there’s a newly paved parking lot for refugees cars and trucks, janitors collect garbage and there are three hot meals a day. There’s also a media trailer, equipped with computers and half a dozen TV screens…Saudi officials evacuated more than 200 villages along the Saudi-Yemen border and brought them here to the camp.
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Back at the camp, the hot day cools as the sun goes down. Men emerge from their tents to apply for cash payments from the Saudi government – about $300 a week per family. The Saudis have taken great pains to say this conflict is nearly over, that the so-called infiltrators have been dealt with and it’s just a matter of time before life goes back to normal. But after touring the camp late last month, the governor of the region ordered 500 more tents to be erected and more permanent structures to follow.
I’m happy the displaced Saudis aren’t undergoing the near genocial conditions in Yemen nonetheless, my head is going to explode.
