Fisheries In the Red Sea Condemns Kidnapping of Three Fishermen by US-Saudi Aggression

The General Fisheries in the Red Sea condemned the Kidnapping of three fishermen by the US-Saudi aggression while they were fishing in Buhais area.

In a statement, Saturday, the office of Fisheries denounced these heinous and repeated acts of terrorizing, detaining and torturing fishermen as part of the crimes to impose systematic starvation.

The statement holds the UN and human rights organizations responsible for being silent on these criminal practices, which raise the suffering of fishermen.

For their part, the released fishermen explained that a number of mercenaries had kidnapped them while they were fishing on a boat off Al-Shabeen Island, located west of the Buhais area of the Midi district, Hajjah Governorate.

They asserted that they were beaten, verbally abused, blindfolded, taken to military boats, held in solitary confinement, tortured, deprived of food except for a loaf of bread and water, and treated badly.

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 Yemen’s 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.fishermen and the fish sector in Yemen.