Millions of people face slaughter or starvation – the UK must stop sending billions in arms exports to Saudi Arabia
Count the number of times you see or hear the phrase “peace on Earth” in the next week or so. It’s one of the great Christmas themes – or great Christmas cliches, if you want to be cynical. But in the year when we remember the centenary of the end of the first world war, when the image of mass graves for millions is fresh in our minds, it needs to be more than a seasonal bromide.
It’s not even as though British involvement in war were a thing of the past. Thank God, most of us have not directly experienced in our lifetimes the impact of full-scale war; but our official policies are still helping to support large-scale slaughter and long-term misery elsewhere in the world. Think of Yemen, where up to 14 million people are on the edge of famine as a result of a war that continues to claim countless lives; a war in which the UK government is complicit through its sales of arms to Saudi Arabia. These arms sales have increased by two thirds since 2016, and now account for nearly half of Britain’s major arms exports.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2SOKuHa
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