First of all, I agree with those saying that “disinformation is a global problem”, but this sentence will remain incomplete without adding that a world without conscience sets behind such disinformation and false information.

It is the same world that has remained silent on tyranny and did nothing to support the free Arab peoples during the Arab Spring. Nevertheless, this, though bitter, was not our real problem, but rather, it has to do with the complicity by Western governments with the tyrants, with the tyranny axis of Iran and Saudi Arabia and their counter-revolutions against the popular revolutions. 

Those governments have preferred their own interests to aspirations of peoples for freedoms and rule of law. Therefore, I believe that just as we need to search for appropriate measures to create a strong and credible information environment, we also need to create a global political environment, where freedom, democracy and human rights standards serve as the frame of reference, without discrimination on grounds of race, religion and geography.

Dear all friends, 

Last Friday evening, Russia's representative to the UN Security Council was showing pictures of the hospital in Mariupol, in an attempt to refute the news about Russian attacks on this building and claim that it was all lies and fabricated images. At the same time, he tried to pass on Russian allegations about the existence of biological weapons factories in Ukraine built with American help, just to justify his country’s invasion of an independent and sovereign State and a UN member.

A day during the past years, his Syrian counterpart similarly stood trying to mix truth with lies, denying horrific acts by the Assad regime whose aircraft dropped barrels laden with explosives on cities and used chemical weapons against civilians. Not only that, but also his regime's troops, with the participation of Iran, Russia, Shiite militias and Hezbollah, overran and destroyed Syrian cities and killed tens of thousands of its residents.

Two decades ago, the US and UK delegates stood in the same place in the UN Security Council, claiming that their governments had information proving that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed mass destruction weapons, and according to such claims they invaded Iraq. As we all know today, those allegations taken as a justification for the invasion of Iraq outside the context of international legitimacy have been proven false. 

As for the Ukrainian case, there is no place for Russian disinformation and lies, not because Russia is less adept in doing so, but because the international community has taken a unified stance against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The compatibility of Western countries’ interests with the Ukrainian people’ position in the face of the Russian invasion has indeed reduced Russia’s chance of using misinformation and false information to almost zero. The Western interests and their compatibility with the Ukrainian people’s right to reject and resist the Russian invasion, and with the need for true solidarity with a people whose cities are being invaded by foreign troops and whose population has been displaced, have left no room for misinformation and false information.

Similar invasions are calling to mind, namely the Russian invasion of Syria before several years and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The wars of both invasions and the resulting atrocities occurred in full view of the world, in parallel with relevant campaigns of lies and misinformation. All this was allowed to happen, not because it was carried out in a professional and camouflaged manner so that no one would notice it, nor because the conditions were favorable, but because the positions of Western governments with wide influence were not actually supportive of the two peoples whose countries were invaded, destroyed, subjected to genocide and countless violations.

As for the cases of Iraq, Syria and Arab Spring countries plagued with wars, the truths were clear and evident, and misinformation and lies would not have been heard, had it not been for the compatibility of influential major powers’ political positions and interests with the propaganda of misinformation and lies.

If only twenty percent of this global campaign of boycott, isolation and sanctions launched by the West to confront the Russian invasion of Ukraine was directed against Iran and its militias in Syria and against the Russian invasion of Syria, we would not have seen Russia invade Ukraine today.

If the revolution of the Syrian people and the Arab Spring in general had received only minimal support of the west in the face of the counter-revolution and its wars and regional and international allies, the course of events in the Arab countries and the world would not have been as it is today, and democratic transformations would have been pushed to unprecedented levels. But the positions in support for democracy and the right of peoples to choose and change their rulers are unfortunately taken on grounds of culture and ethnic and geographical affiliations, and of their impact on the interests and influence of Western countries.

Throughout the history of mankind, countries, conflicts and wars, the war of falsification of facts, misinformation and lies has always existed. The new thing today is that the modern technology and development in communication and media are used as arenas for such wars. The new thing today lies in the unprecedented rapid spread of false news and misleading information thanks to internet, digital media and social platforms.

The basis of misinformation and lies starts from the political orientations adopted to serve the interests of countries that do not care about the truth and disregard the values of press freedom and human rights. The political positions of regimes and states often provide a suitable environment for spreading misinformation and lies, and for electronic militias to use propaganda campaigns based on fabrications, lies and deception in order to confuse the truth and confuse public opinion.

A complete picture of the reasons for the spread of misinformation will not be available if we limit ourselves to the means of promoting it in the press, the Internet and social media platforms. The media in all its branches, including electronic media and communication platforms, are used as a battlefield fueled by rogue regimes and armed militias.

The environment of lies and disinformation is primarily nurtured and maintained by authoritarian and ideological regimes involved in wars against their own societies and neighbors. 

From our experience from the Arab Spring revolutions, we have a lot to say about the war of disinformation and the dissemination of false information, as the war of disinformation was one form the comprehensive war on everything related to the Arab Spring, including its revolutions, societies, countries, and existence.

Aligning the position towards state sovereignty, democracy, human rights and fascist wars on peoples in line with the balance of interests and influence of Western powers, and on grounds of geopolitical affiliation, race and religion has contributed greatly to fostering fascism, wars and turmoil across the world, as well as leading some to retreat from the values of democracy and modern state.

The democratic world colluded with the machines of producing lies and misinformation labelled our peoples as “terrorism” to cover up the wars of counter-revolutions against societies that revolted for freedom, democracy and justice in 2011, the year of the Arab Spring revolutions. 

Our peoples courageously expressed their positions towards tyranny and oppression, and crowned their relevant struggles with noble and daring revolutions and uprisings, with the testimony of all the free people of the world. Starting in 2011, a clear battle between two camps has emerged: those advocating for democracy and human rights on the one hand, and the counter-revolutionary forces on the other. The latter has turned the Arab countries into a battlefield because they want their people to be subordinates, and not citizens enjoying all the rights of citizenship.

In all my lectures and speeches in global conferences and on the campus of prestigious universities in the USA, UK and EU, I have always emphasized that the Arab Spring revolutions have placed the whole world before the moment of truth, and forced the long-established democracies to choose between two options: establishing the credibility of their claims that they support democracy, human rights, freedoms and the peoples struggle for justice and democracy, or retreating from the entire human rights system and their global heritage, a move whose repercussions will not only be limited within the borders of the third-world countries that have turned into great seclusions because of their rulers, but will also extend to the advanced democracies in Europe and America. 

Speaking from very important global platforms years before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, I stressed that we are all in one world, and that no one can build walls of isolation within his own borders as an a way to stay safe from the fall of any part of this world into wars, chaos and non-state.

The world has abandoned the pro-freedom and -democracy revolutions in the Arab region, allowing the anti-democratic axes like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia declare their war of revenge on our societies for nothing but because we wanted to be human like others, and we rose peacefully for the sake of dignity, the rule of law, civil society, equality and human rights.

Let us agree that our world is dominated by a global system that is in a state of crisis and is no longer viable, and it is time to change it. When I talk about the crisis of the world order, I am referring to the clearly increasing state of retreating from democratic values and human rights, as manifested through the discriminatory response to a revolutionary Arab people believing in freedom, democracy and equality and making sacrifices for them, and to another European one believing in the same values and making sacrifices for them.

How do the international community and its major powers, which are facing the Russian challenge in Ukraine, look today at a regime like the Assad regime in Syria? How does the civilized democratic West accept the reintegration of a murderous regime like the Assad regime, a sectarian regime that killed a million Syrians and displaced five million and summoned Iran and its militias, along with Russia, to share its war on its people?

Is there any difference between the invasion in Europe and the invasion in the Middle East? Is there a difference between criminal regimes or between genocides, though even harsher, broader and more horrific in our region?!

What’s left of the slogans of major democracies in the West, where democracy, freedom and human rights have been raises as the headlines and slogans of policies since the end of World War II, whereas these democracies are sponsoring a genocidal war on the Yemeni people, a war waged by Iran and Saudi Arabia in direct, indirect and brutal ways?

Yemen is part of this world, but it is experiencing the tragedies of the fascist war and the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, alone and defenseless from any real support.

For eight years, our people has been facing an all-out war of revenge, a fierce war that represents a new pattern of undermining the life foundations of the entire population. The state collapsed and sectarian Houthi militias overran the capital and cities. In light of the non-payment of salaries and the collapse of the health and service system, the Houthi militias have taken control of international aid. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have bombed our cities and infrastructure, established militias loyal to them in the city of Aden. 

The UAE has occupied Yemen’s ports, oil-and-gas facilities, and the islands of Socotra and Mayun. A few days ago, the advisor of Mohammed bin Zayed wrote that the Yemeni island of Socotra would be the "eighth emirate" of their oil-rich monarchy, while major powers keep giving praise and blessings to the UAE-run machine of producing misinformation and lies.

The UAE aircraft killed 300 soldiers of the Yemeni army on the outskirts of Aden, and the UAE went to the UN Security Council to tell its ugliest lie by claiming that it had killed "terrorists!"

The de facto authority of the Iranian-backed Houthi militia is in fact a daily declaration of war against urban and rural population in areas under its control. It is in no way a national entity facing the Saudi-Emirati occupation of Yemen. It is using the Saudi-Emirati occupation as a false excuse to justify its war against the Yemenis.

The Saudi-Emirati coalition has waged its war to divide Yemen and seize control of its strategic islands, coastlines, ports and gas-and-oil resources, while raising a false slogan that it supports legitimacy and confronts the Houthi militias. In fact, this militia is getting stronger thanks to this irresponsible coalition that is running the war to destroy Yemen.

We call on the world to stop this brutal war against our Yemeni people. We call on the world to support our people to restore their state and complete the transitional period in accordance with the three references represented by UNSC resolutions on Yemen, the agreement on transfer of power and the outcomes of the national dialogue. We call on the democratic world to stop supporting Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which are implicated in war crimes against humanity in Yemen, and to stop arms sales to them. We call on the international community to support us in bringing war criminals to justice and prosecuting those involved in war crimes in Yemen before international courts. We call on the world to impose restrictions on warlords and militia leaders and not to deal with them as political parties.

We call upon the world to respect the right of our people to life and put an end to a fascist war, whose main parties are Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their affiliated militias, on our people.