To Feed Their Families Yemeni Fishermen Face US-Saudi Risk

Catching fish for a living in Yemen isn’t only about jumping in a boat and throwing a net into the sea. You need to also say goodbye to your family and prepare them for the fact that they might never see you again.

Because what was once a fairly routine occupation has, since war started in 2014, often become a matter of life and death.

This has little to do with storms or treacherous currents at sea, but rather the fact that after the Saudi-led coalition declared most of Yemen’s territorial waters a conflict zone, fishermen have frequently been fired upon and killed when attempting to work there.

As of August 2019, at least 334 fishermen had been reported killed or injured since 2015, according to statistics from Yemen’s fisheries authority. Others had been arrested and had their boats seized, while some were now detained in Saudi-run prisons in Yemen.

“We are allowed to fish in specific areas near to the beach,” Ahmed Futaih, a fisherman in his 40s from Aden city, told Middle East Eye.

“But when we try to fish in deeper areas, where there are a lot of fish, Apache helicopters chase us and the fighters shoot at us or their military boats arrest us and seize our boats.

“One of my colleagues was arrested by the Saudi-led coalition and they seized his boat. They only released him after he signed papers saying that he would not fish in the banned areas again.”

Local reports estimate that of Yemen’s approximate 100,000 fishermen, since 2015 over a third (37,000) have quit and thus lost their income.

This is one of the world’s poorest countries, where the war has resulted in tens of thousands of people living in famine-like conditions and which has been declared by the United Nations as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.