"You deserve citizenship" .. Emirati gift to residents of Socotra and angry responses from Yemen

Mohammed Abdul Malik - Al Jazeera Net

"I assure you that the people of Socotra will be part of the UAE and deserve nationality without a request, because between us and them from ancient times and history." These were some of the statements made by an Emirati official during his meeting in Ajman with Yemeni sheikhs and citizens from the Yemeni island of Socotra.

This talk about naturalization of Socotra residents moved to social networking sites, where activists circulated the remarks in a section of the unnamed UAE speaker - and angered Yemeni reactions.

Activists said that the speech of the UAE speaker came at a meeting in Ajman with a group of people from the Yemeni province of Socotra and in the presence of the former governor of Socotra Salem Abdullah, a member of the Yemeni-backed Transitional Council of Yemen.

The residents of Socotra will be part of the UAE and will be granted citizenship, the UAE spokesman said in the video, adding that this was "taken for granted".

The Yemeni activists who reacted to these statements felt that the UAE wanted to control Socotra to implement a special colonial agenda and that it was provoking the people of Yemen.

"The UAE is dealing with Yemen as if it were an Emirati land," said Advisor to the Yemeni Ministry of Information Mukhtar Al-Rahbi in a tweet on Twitter. "It supports the factions that want and arrest those who want and support militias against the state and want to confiscate Socotra."

"The UAE is behaving in a colonial way and it is provoking the dignity of Yemen through Socotra," wrote rights activist Tawfiq al-Hamidi.

The Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman posted the video on her Facebook page and wrote to him: "Tell these stupid idiots that a grain of dust from Yemen is worth all their glass towns."

On the other hand, Yemeni researcher in international relations, Yasser Amer told Al Jazeera Net that the UAE is exploiting the weakness of the Yemeni state and the difficult economic situation experienced by citizens and seeks to "pass its agenda and implement its malicious plan," while Yemenis were waiting to stand by Yemen in its ordeal and stage The hard going through.

"Unfortunately, the UAE is trying, in cheap ways, to buy the loyalty of the sons of Socotra, as well as the people of the south, in order to complicate the crisis and increase the suffering of the Yemenis," Amer said.

"The Emirates say that Socotra will become part of the UAE and that its residents will be granted UAE nationality," said Kamal Al-Baadani, a Yemeni academic on his Facebook page.

He said, "You fools, if the story of nationality was Hadramout Saudi Arabia, the leaders and kings of capital in the Kingdom are from Hadramout and hold Saudi nationality, yet Saudi Arabia did not say one day that Hadramout Saudi Arabia?" "The history of the blood tree of the two brothers on the island (a kind of rare tree in Socotra) is older than the history of your state in thousands of years."

"The UAE sheikhs believe they can swallow the biggest islands of Yemen and enrich them simply because they fought a failed war in our country, deviated from its goals, derailed its course, undermined state institutions, spread tattoos, chaos and assassinations, and torn the nation's flesh," said South Yemeni journalist Abdul Raqeeb al-Hudaiani on his Facebook page.

"They do not understand the movement of the Yemeni masses that came out on the island, and confirmed their Yemeni pride in this affiliation, nor the street protests in Aden, Hadramout, Mahara and Shabwa."

More than a year ago, there were reports of UAE moves to buy and win the loyalty of the Socotra, a six-island archipelago, strategically located on the Indian Ocean.

In mid-2018, the archipelago witnessed protests against the UAE military presence after Abu Dhabi last May sent its troops to Socotra Airport without coordination with the Yemeni side, in conjunction with a visit to the island by former Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed Obaid Bin Dagher And a number of ministers. The Yemeni government rejected this move as unjustified and informed the UN Security Council.

UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash wrote in his Twitter account, saying, "We have historical and family ties with Socotra and its people," which sparked Yemeni controversy and anger over what was described as the ambitions of the UAE in Socotra.