UAE creates severe food crisis on Socotra Island

SOCOTRA, Aug. 25 (YPA) – Pro-UAE traders have emptied the commercial market in the occupied Yemeni archipelago of the basic food needs of citizens in the past few days.

Local sources said in the Island said that many influential traders in the Socotra Archipelago created made a food crisis at the behest of the Emirati Khalifa Foundation, working to monopolize the sale of flour and hide it in warehouses without selling it to citizens, with the knowledge of the UAE-funded governor of the island, Raafat Al-Thaqali.

The sources added that the monopoly of traders, who have good relations with the Khalifa Foundation on selling flour and basic food items to citizens, came within the framework of the Foundation’s policy of starvation against the island’s residents and placing them at its mercy.

They explained that the merchants forced citizens to buy a 25 kg bag of flour at a price of 33,000 riyals, an increase of 10,000 riyals during normal days, with the continued deterioration of the living conditions of the residents who refused to leave the island as part of the mass displacement policy that the UAE implemented against them since 2020.

“The director of the industry office on the island ignores his responsibilities and is actively promoting suspicious Emirati festivals that target the culture of the conservative Socotra society,” the sources added.

AA