David Goessmann: Welcome to Contact City. We are here at the World Congress of the International Peace Bureau, “Disarm for a Climate of Peace,” at the Technical University of Berlin. Our next guest is Tawakol Karman.

Tawakol Karman is [an] activist in Yemen. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her struggle in the Arab Spring for women’s rights, democracy, and freedom.

 

David Goessmann: Welcome to Contact City, Tawakol Karman. It’s [a] great pleasure to have you.

Tawakol Karman: Thank you so much for hosting me and for this interview. Thank you.

 

David Goessmann: Why are you here at the Peace Congress?

Tawakkol Karman: I’m here to share my colleagues with, who are the peacemakers, on our [will/world], and our activities for making peace around the world. For creating sustainable peace, which means sustainable development. For telling all over the world, for telling the international community, for telling the business sector, for telling all the effective sectors that peace needs development. There is no peace without development, and there is no development without peace. We are here for calling for disarmament, for calling for making a lot of effort to fight the illegal armament and also nuclear and also disarm all those militias and the armed groups that increase around the world, especially in the Arabian peninsula and especially in Yemen. So with the militia of Al Houthi or with any other militias that they are now winning and owning their weapons and use the weapons as a tool to kill the will of people, as a tool of the counter-revolution and also the coup against the [incomprehensible; will of people?] for peaceful change.

 

David Goessmann: You were one of the speakers of the 2011 uprising in Yemen in the fight against then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Take us from there, because many of our viewers and listeners don’t know what has happened in the last years in Yemen. So what happened there?

Tawakkol Karman: What happened there, we can say it in three periods, especially when we start around 2011. The first period, which is the period of the peaceful revolution that started in 2011 as a result of the will of people to have a new country based on democracy and freedom and equality, rule of law and peace and development, and that they made a great peaceful revolution against the dictator Ali Saleh, and they when in their struggle against Ali Saleh, in the peaceful revolution against Ali Saleh, and forced him to resign on November 2011. This is the first step, which is very important when we talk about Yemen. Second step, which is the transition period, which was also peaceful period, that is all Yemeni enter into this period with the peaceful, with tolerance, with acceptance, even accepting the party of the dictator himself, Ali Saleh, and we made a national dialog, a great national dialog, continued like nine months at the time, and that was in 2012, and we made this great national dialog, and we signed onto this national dialog with all the power in Yemen, including the militia of Al Houthi and also alliance of Ali Saleh, and we made a draft of the constitution that really a great constitution that can make Yemen to pass to the future, make Yemen democratic and make Yemen lead with social justice, and also with democracy and peace. The third step, which is the step of [the] coup, the coup that was led by the ousted President Ali Saleh and the militia of Al Houthi, who made the coup against [incomprehensible] all the peaceful, you know, methods, at the first thing, and also I guess against the constitution, the draft constitution that was just steps to make it, to put it in the referendum, and against the national dialog, and against the legitimate president, the legitimate government, and they led a very ugly, bloody war against Yemenis. So now Yemenis live in the third part of this process of change, which is the part of war, of an ugly war led by the ousted President Ali Saleh, and also the militia of Al Houthi, who attacked the republic itself, who attacked the outcomes of the values of human rights, of equality and also democracy that we sacrificed for, and also now the war is – The President, the legitimate President, asked the Arab coalition, led by the Saudis, to help him against this coup. Now we are under the war that is by Saudi and Arab coalition with the President Hadi and also by militia of Al Houthi and Ali Saleh that is backed by Iran. So this is the reality in Yemen and now the civilians suffer a lot Yemen, but we are calling for a stop to this war, for a ceasefire that should start immediately, in parallel with handing over the weapons from the, taking the weapons from the militia. The militia has to hand over the weapons to the state. They have to withdraw from all the cities that they occupied, and here I’m talking about the militia of Al Houthi, and they have then to transfer themselves to the political party to participate in the public, in the political life without using violence, without using weapons, and then we will start our referendum for the constitution and then the election. All this must be with the transitional justice law that we have to spread, that we have to implement, and also we have to make economic reforms, we have to make economic growth that must be with the political transition because if there is no economic support that means all things will collapse, as it happened

 

David Goessmann: What is the humanitarian situation for the civilians on the ground in Yemen right now? And what is Saudi Arabia doing? I mean, we have the reports that Saudi Arabia is bombing indiscriminately hospitals and also civilians in Yemen. Your take on that.

Tawakkol Karman: The humanitarian situation is very bad in Yemen because it’s the result of war. It was very bad under the rule of ousted President Ali Saleh, under the rule of the dictator. Because of that we make the war, the peaceful revolution against him. And now it’s worse because of the war that was started by the ousted President Ali Saleh. The civilians are now victims of this war. Yes, we should talk about the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia in Yemen that attacked the civilians. That is very true to talk about that. That’s very true to criticize that. But also we should also focus on the crimes that happened by the Al Houthi and by the ousted President Ali Saleh, with the backing of Iran. So it is not fair to speak about the rule of the Arab coalition led by Saudis attacking civilians without talking about the same rule that happened from militia of Al Houthi and Ali Saleh. That is very important and here I am calling media to talk about that, to focus also on what are the crimes that happened in Yemen – Iran supports them. They support them to topple Yemen, to topple the republic. Now we have tens of thousands of people that have disappeared under the militia of Al Houthi and Ali Saleh. They occupied Yemen, they occupied the capital. So yes, we are victims, victims of this war. We are victims of first the Iranians interfering in Yemen, who supported the ousted President Ali Saleh and the militia of Al Houthi to make revenge against Yemenis, and we are victims of the Arab coalition with the Saudis who attacked the civilians in this war, because they supported President Hadi as a legitimate president to return to Yemen. So we criticize them for killing civilians more than anything else.

 

David Goessmann: What is the role of the United States in this conflict? I mean, they are delivering weapons to Saudi Arabia, as Germany does. The United States is targeting people in Yemen via drones in the so-called War on Terror. Relatives of US drone victims tried to sue Germany in court. Germany holds the military base where the satellite navigation of the drones is operated. Your comment on the responsibility of the US and to some extent Germany as well, with regard to conflict and casualties in Yemen?

Tawakkol Karman: Look, if we talk about the role of the United States we should talk about the role of all the international community who didn’t do their role on helping people in their struggle for freedom and justice and democracy. Unfortunately they let the tyrants kill people inside their countries. For example what’s happening in Syria. They didn’t help the Syrian people in their just battle against the dictator Bashar al-Assad. So the international community didn’t really – crime against humanity when they are silent against crimes that came from the dictators against – the Bashar al-Assad or Ali Saleh. They are criminals, so they have to stop them. They have to put them in jail. The international criminal court should try them. The international community should freeze their assets, should take their assets and return them to the people. So the crimes around the world are increasing because of the absence of the international community. This is from one hand, from other hand also the nuclear agreement from this conference we call from, to stop nuclear process in the countries who want to work on nuclear missiles. But also we said that it must not – to give them a prize, so to encourage some country to stop their nuclear agreement, why give them other prize that is, you know, to kill people. For example, what’s happened with Iran, when they stopped – when they made the deal with Iran to stop its nuclear agreement. They give help, the prize, which is to control or to spread its hands on the Arab peninsula. And that is not fair. People are threatened for their freedom. The United States was the leader in this agreement. They sell us as slaves while our people are in the streets, calling for their freedom and justice. And from other hand, any kind of selling heavy weapons to any dictator, any totalitarian – sorry for my English. I am totally against selling weapons to tyrants. But also, I’m telling you to not just stop giving them the weapons. Also try them. Don’t let them kill people. Why are they silent against the crimes, officially. They just talk! It’s just talk. And why they are silent about the crimes of Ali Saleh and the militia of Al Houthi? So this is a very important thing. So yes, stop selling weapons to any dictatorial regime, but also any regime that is killing people, they have to stop them, directly.

 

David Goessmann: 2.8 million people in Yemen are displaced due to ongoing violence and conflict in your country, but only some 170,000 made it to Saudi Arabia, Oman, or Somalia, the rest is kind of trapped between coastlines and deserts, says a spokesperson of the UNHCR. Talk about the refugee crisis in your country. We almost never hear about it, and the press even, the media, is full of refugee crisis in Europe since last year.

Tawakkol Karman: Because the refugees in Europe, most of them are displaced inside Yemen. It’s more than 10 million people that are displaced in Yemen. So in Yemen they didn’t have a chance to travel, to make a really huge escape from Yemen like what’s happened from Syria. But there is refugees in Djibouti, there is refugees in Oman, there is refugees in Saudi. And this number here in Germany, few number in Germany, those people need a lot of help. Even they are displaced inside Yemen or they are refugee outside it. It needs to focus about the issue, to help them in the humanitarian field, to work with them as humans, to give them their rights. People for example here in Germany they are as a new, I don’t know if this number is right or not, but what I knew that they are about 1,000. So they have to deal like other refugees. They have to have their rights in education, in health, in everything because they are in a great country like Germany. The same thing with other countries. We have to respect the rights of refugees as human beings. Those people escaped from tyranny, those people escaped from terrorism, especially the people from Syria, so those people – we should, the international community, the countries that host them, they have to deal with them as human entities. And here I really want to thank Germany as a country, people, civil society, for their really great effort for helping refugees here. The most important solution for refugees is justice, is helping them to stop the war, the reason of war, the something that caused the war, which is the tyrant himself. The tyrant himself, he made all these kills. He make all these things to really force those people to escape from there, from their home. If we want to solve the refugee [crisis] we should help the people on stopping the tyranny, on stopping the injustice. Also, development, it’s very important in fighting poverty, in making our effort to make a really sustainable development. We need sustainable development for sustainable peace, so that we then can make our world safe, more safe.

 

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