Fisheries Authority Condemns Ongoing Piracy over Fishermen off Yemeni Coast

The General Authority for Fisheries in the Red Sea condemned the detention of a fishing boat owned by a Yemeni fisherman with its crew by the Eritrean Navy and an Emirati ferry, while the fishermen were working at sea in the international waterway, 26 nautical miles from the Yemeni island of Kibreet.

In a statement on Wednesday, the authority denounced the continuation of piracy against fishermen’s boats and the coalition forces’ attacks on fishermen, which affected thousands of them.

The statement stressed that the insistence of the forces of the US-Saudi aggression and their mercenaries on their criminal practices in terrorizing fishermen and preventing them from carrying out their work, using all methods of harassment, starvation and siege, is a flagrant violation of all international norms and laws.

The authority blamed the Eritrean authorities and the countries involved in aggression for the full consequences of the continuation of these violations against the fishermen and the deprivation they cause for tens of thousands of their only source of income and the humanitarian catastrophe of unimaginable consequences.

The statement condemned the shameful silence of the United Nations and its organizations regarding the genocide committed by these countries against the Yemeni people. It called on the international community, the Security Council and humanitarian organizations to take urgent action to stop the piracy practiced by the coalition forces in the Red Sea against fishermen.

Saudi Arabia and many of its allies have been waging a war on Yemen since 2015 to restore power to the country’s Riyadh-friendly former officials. The war and a simultaneous siege that the US-Saudi-led coalition has been enforcing on the country has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis.

The invasion has pushed entire Yemen close to the brink of outright famine, turning the country into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Coastal communities in Yemen have suffered greatly in the ongoing bloody war. Fishing boats, ports and processing sites have been destroyed or damaged, and many fishermen have lost their lives.

The US-Saudi-led coalition launched airstrikes which hit fishing boats and markets, and mines were laid in the sea making the waters treacherous. To make matters worse, the exacerbation of piracy and attacks by the Eritrean authorities and the aggression forces against fishermen on the Yemeni coasts.