Perhaps it is self-evident to say that the safety of the people is the key responsibility of any authority that manages people’s affairs or claims to do so, regardless of the way in which it acquired this authority, and the accompanying controversy and discussions about governance and legitimacy.
Here, we try to tackle the issue of the “Covid-19” pandemic, as a good example for testing the “propaganda” of political discourse in view of its behavior and practices, specifically with the Ansar Allah group (Houthis), which controls large and populated areas, and is trying to issue a discourse that shows concern for people. Is the behavior consistent with that claim?
Since the beginning of the year 2020 until now, the observer of the practices of the Ansar Allah authority (Houthis), and how they dealt with the spread of the global pandemic, finds a clear picture that can be built upon in condemning the official behavior that does not take the life and health of Yemeni citizens into consideration, even as an attempt, with which it is possible to sense the existence of some form of the state, or its services.
In the face of people’s panic and their tragedy of losing loved ones every day, the authority of Ansar Allah (Houthis) chose to turn its back to the people, and hit the wall with all the scientific and medical data and human accumulation that wanted to put an end to the planet’s suffering from this deadly microscopic enemy; Instead of taking precautionary measures that would cordon off the epicenters of the outbreak, or allow the world to enter test materials and explore the virus, and immunization vaccines, the priests of the group went to adopt the conspiracy theory, and did nothing about the situation, on the grounds that we are "a blessed" and “favored” people to Allah and under the care of “divine providence.” 'But at what cost?!
If we were governed by reason and logic, and chose the path of peace in resolving our differences, we would not have found this horrific collapse in the health sector, and the semi-systematic targeting of medical staff, and we would have found a body who bears responsibility and civilians can hold it accountable.
All the fragile health groups seem as if they are in the hands of the Huthis, who chose to add the victims of this pandemic to their long record of disregarding the lives of Yemenis, to the extent that officials believe - here in Sana’a - that we do not even deserve a medical record so that the world knows how much we have lost, and how much we will lose if the situation continues as it is.
We all remember, how the indifference to dealing with the virus, with its similar human rights violations and security breaches, gave Yemenis a surge of hope that someone would care, but the wonderful results of besieging the epidemic were not invested in more measures and treatments, but the group's theorists went to considering the limited number of Covid19 infections as one of the blessings that God chose for them as warriors, which resulted in this great explosion of injuries and losses.
But do officials in the health ministry of Ansar Allah (Houthis), and in the hierarchy of its leadership, believe that by doing this they are free from their duties?! Does being satisfied with watching and silence give them immunity from the fact that these souls that we see falling every day on social media and daily funerals, would have survived if there was one official in this country who takes the public interest in mind, instead of the bleeding that Yemeni society is witnessing by the loss of its doctors and academics and what will be the impacts of that on the gloomy unknown future?!
Some may go for ready-made arguments, such as that the health systems of developed countries collapsed under the pressure of the pandemic; How about a poor country witnessing fierce war?! This logic seems more nihilistic than it should be, given that many of the world’s systems deal responsibly with the vaccination of their citizens, or the imposition of a form of total and partial closure to limit the impact of the virus on people, even if the price is the economies of these countries and their development structures, which makes the responsibility double on those who chose to speak on behalf of the people and represent their interests.
This also leads us, to the affirmation that we always make in our appeals, that war and its continuation are a major and original cause of our disasters; If we were governed by reason and logic, and chose the path of peace in resolving our differences, we would not have witnessed this horrible collapse in the health sector, and the semi-systematic targeting of medical staff, and if we would have found someone who bears responsibility and civilians can put him before its obligations, and more than that, we would not have found someone who runs our affairs in this primitive way which has been vanished now.
Proposed for social media:
Since the outbreak of the Corona pandemic (Covid-19), the authority of Ansar Allah (Houthis) in Sana'a has chosen to disavow its responsibility towards the people living in its areas of control. How did the pandemic test the Group's state behavior?
