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Regarding the Crime of Harassment Against the Sacred Self in the White House
Abdulrasheed Al-Faqih
Following a statement I made on July 12, 2022, to The Guardian’s correspondent in Washington, Stephanie Kirchgaessner, I personally faced a vile professional execution attempt over the past three years under a campaign titled "harassment and sexual exploitation." These are baseless fabrications, without any complainants or elements of any crime, simply because I said "no" to the dinosaurs inhabiting the White House. This was the only act of harassment I initiated, fully aware and in defense of my country, Yemen, my citizenship, my colleagues, and my professional and humanitarian honor. I will continue to do so under all circumstances.
There is perhaps a strange paradox in that, despite everything we have experienced—risks, threats, harm, and terror due to our work in the midst of a war involving extremist armed groups, aggressive governments, security agencies, military forces, and parties—we have exposed and criticized their violations, making us targets for repeated attacks, detention, and dozens of campaigns of slander and intimidation. However, the most difficult experience for me occurred while I was in the United States during an advocacy trip in the second half of 2022, coinciding with the preparations for Biden’s sole visit to Saudi Arabia.
In the American capital, Washington, I held several meetings with key stakeholders and officials, as is customary during our advocacy trips to capitals influential on the situation in Yemen. During these discussions, officials at the White House proposed a poor mechanism for addressing human rights issues after I spoke to The Guardian, criticizing one of the Biden administration's flawed ideas for handling human rights violations in Yemen. I found myself isolated, facing severe targeting and pressure, despite the awareness of many individuals and entities in a country that prides itself on being the first democracy and the home of its advocates and theorists, which included much retaliation for the crime of touching the inflated narcissism of Western political thought, from a man who came from the far east, unarmed except for his mind and conscience.
We have resisted numerous attempts to exploit and infiltrate our work, as there have been persistent efforts to leverage the power of our organization and its field access for intelligence, security, military, and war purposes. This includes undermining our organization through attempts to recruit members of our team and an American initiative through an international human rights organization to implant modern intelligence devices in various areas of Yemen in 2020. We have evidence of this, including the Pentagon's recent attempt, represented by the U.S. Department of Defense, in early October 2024. We have maintained records of evidence, names of individuals and entities, and complaints submitted to those entities, which have taken no institutional steps to protect human rights and humanitarian work from any infiltration or exploitation. We will continue our efforts until accountability is achieved.
At "Mwatana," we are doing our utmost to protect our independent human rights work from attempts at exploitation, infiltration, and misuse. We possess the will, insight, competence, and effectiveness to fulfill our duties to the fullest extent.
