The Saudi-Led Coalition Bombed the Headquarters of Yemen's Official Television

The Saudi-led coalition has committed a new violation against Yemeni journalists by bombing the gate of Yemen's official television headquarters on Friday evening, 8 December 2017, as the crew of the evening news were leaving the station, in a clear breach of all international conventions and covenants, foremost of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Humanitarian Law.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 4 guards and wounding one of the technicians, it also caused serious damages to the building and raised concerns among other media workers from direct targeting by the Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, especially since the targeting of Yemen's official television is not the first targeting of its kind, the Saudi-led coalition has targeted the same building in September 2015, causing the suspension of television broadcasting in addition to the destruction of the state-owned Saba TV's building.

The Journalist Support Committee (JSC) expresses its full solidarity with Yemeni journalists, and condemns in the strongest terms this incident and calls on the international community to put an end to these grave violations and calls for the accountability of the aggressors. The committee also calls for neutralizing journalists from the ongoing conflict as it is stated in the international conventions that journalists are not a party in any conflict and that their headquarters are civilian facilities that any assault against it is criminalized by the law.

The committee deplores the silence and stalemate of the international community towards taking any action to hold perpetrators accountable for these violations, knowingly that Yemen is suffering from a humanitarian catastrophe, the largest humanitarian crisis of the century, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and the assaults on journalists and media outlets with the ban on foreign journalists from entering Yemen leads to a media blackout and to dilute the truth about Yemen's suffering from the World.

Journalist Support Committee - Yemen
9 December 2017