Verbatim report of proceedings

Thursday, 15 June 2017 - Strasbourg

8.4. Humanitarian situation in Yemen (RC-B8-0407/2017, B8-0407/2017, B8-0408/2017, B8-0409/2017, B8-0410/2017, B8-0411/2017, B8-0412/2017, B8-0413/2017)

Ustne wyjaśnienia dotyczące głosowania

  Andrejs Mamikins (S&D). – Mr President, conflict in Yemen is not a popular theme of discussion in European media. This is leading to our usual European problem: selective blindness. One part of this blindness exists because of a lack of concentration in European society. The problem exists only if people see the emotional stories on TV or in social media. If not, the problem does not exist in people’s minds at all. As a result, politicians are free to do nothing to resolve this bloody conflict.

Many European politicians are not being frank about the situation in Yemen. The political elite of some EU countries are silent because of the interest in the arms trading deal with Saudi Arabia. Money has no smell. We Europeans are also responsible for the victims of this ongoing conflict because of our silence, and are fuelling this war by selling weapons to groups in the conflict zone. We in the European Parliament like to criticise other countries, but we are not critical of ourselves.

I supported all the amendments of the GUE Group and the Greens in this resolution.