Saudi TV Suspends Announcer over Voicing Support for Yemen


Saudi TV Suspends Announcer over Voicing Support for Yemen

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Director-General of the Saudi sports network, KSA Sports, has suspended Palestinian announcer Razan Malash from appearing on television broadcasts after finding out that she had posted a series of posts on Twitter in solidarity with Yemen.

Ghanem al-Qahtani announced in a Twitter post that Malash had been suspended from work on the sports channel over abusive tweets towards the Kingdom.

Qahtani added that the Spain-based announcer did not work directly with the Saudi sports network, but through a company contracted by them, Press TV reported.

 “The Saudi fighters only strike Yemen, not Israel,” Malash wrote in a tweet.

She had accused Saudi Arabia of being responsible for the emergence of Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in an earlier post.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past four and a half years.

The UN says over 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.

Back in 2018, Saudi-owned and Dubai-based Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) fired announcer Ola Al-Fares after she criticized US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as the capital of the Israeli regime.

“Trump did not choose the time absurdly… Tonight, we condemn and tomorrow we welcome him,” she tweeted at the time.

Trump sparked controversy by officially recognizing Jerusalem (al-Quds) as the Israeli capital in December 2017, before moving his country's embassy there from Tel Aviv in May 2018.

Guatemala and Paraguay later followed in Washington’s footstep, before the latter reversed its decision after just four months.

Israel lays claim to the entire Jerusalem (al-Quds), but the international community views the city’s eastern sector as occupied territory and Palestinians consider it the capital of their future state.

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