Al-Mahara Fishermen Protesting Overfishing by Foreign Companies

 Number of fishermen in Al-Mahra Governorate, eastern Yemen, said that local and foreign companies are illegally overfishing in the governorate’s seas. They called on the concerned authorities to move quickly to stop indiscriminate fishing, by imposing laws to regulate that.

The fishermen pointed out that indiscriminate fishing caused a disaster in the seas of Al-Mahra, which led to the extinction of many seasonal fish species.

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.

As of August 2019, at least 334 fishermen had been reported killed or injured since 2015, according to statistics from Yemen’s fisheries authority. Others had been arrested and had their boats seized, while some were now detained in Saudi-run prisons in Yemen.

Local reports estimate that of Yemen’s approximate 100,000 fishermen, since 2015 over a third (37,000) have quit and thus lost their income.