Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

My question is very simple. Why is the Tánaiste not demanding, and why is the EU not imposing, sanctions on Saudi Arabia? The humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding in Yemen is due, to a large extent, to the Saudi military intervention, the blockade and the deliberate attempts to starve and bomb the population into submission. Of course, standing behind Saudi in this regard are the United States, France and Germany. They are arming the Saudi regime, a regime whose agents murder a man who is a dissident journalist. They dismembered his body and, if the reports are accurate, they burned the remains of his body with acid to destroy them. This is what we are dealing with. There are 22 of these characters around the corner from this building in the Saudi Embassy. Why are there no sanctions? Why is this not being said? Can we impose sanctions on what is an absolutely rogue barbaric regime that is inflicting the sort of humanitarian horror that we are seeing? The Tánaiste knows the answer to this question. We do not do it because France, the UK and the United States make a great deal of money backing these people. Even worse, geo-politically these countries do not mind what those people do. It suits them to have Saudis do this because Saudi is a reliable ally for western interests in the region. That is the truth. We all know it is the truth. Millions of people are suffering. Will the Government not stand up and say that is the truth of it? Can we not expect the European Union to have a little more moral backbone and do something about it?

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