Why are Yemenis not treated equally? [Archives:2002/20/Focus]

BY GARY VEY
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I was touched by your editorial Slaves Cannot Liberate Nations. It reminded me of something that happened about a year ago while I was visiting Yemen with a group of other American tourists.
One of the women with our group got a scratch on her eye-lid that got infected and caused her eye to close and swell. She needed some antibiotics and so we were driven to a hospital near Zabid. The hospital was very busy with many dozens of families waiting outside the door, many holding small children who were limp in their arms. A strong man was guarding the door, often physically shoving and pushing back the desperate fathers who were worried about their sons and daughters.
Despite this crowd waiting for emergency help, we were immediately allowed right in to the hospital and almost immediately saw a physician and obtained treatment for the American woman. As they treated her in a small room, I waited in the reception room and witnessed the struggle for Yemeni citizens trying to obtain medical help. I thought it was quite unfair and had many of the same thoughts that were expressed in this editorial.
Why is it that American, or non-Yemeni people, are treated as if they were somehow special? Surely this hospitality was appreciated by our group, and especially by the young woman with the injury, but we all thought that we ought to have waited, as we would have had to do in our own country, until more serious injuries and sickness was attended to. Surely these little children deserved to be seen before this minor eye infection. We felt bad and ashamed that we had been treated special and we could hardly look in the eyes of the people as we left the hospital. Yet, they did not show anger at us on the contrary, they seemed to understand.
But what did they understand? That it is accepted practice to treat Arab people as insignificant? It seems sadly so.
I do not want to start a revolution but this seems what is needed in all Arab nations. Arab people have many qualities of culture that are far more moral and sane than other races and so they ought to be teaching their children to be proud and to demand respect and equality.
Let us start a movement to give respect to Arab people. Let us all stop working for sub-standard wages and start cleaning up our environment and taking pride in Arab culture. I am not an Arab, but I have grown to respect this culture and see that it has not taken its place among the people of the Earth as a noble and proud people. This is much too slow in happening but let us change this now!
We can start by teaching pride in our schools. We can start by cleaning up our environment and making it a clean place, fit for proud people. We can demand equality and show that we can respect and act with sanity in the face of foolish aggression. Let Israel and the rest of the world decay with their low morality while Arabs continue to follow the good path of morality and the way of Allah. And remember: in history these dramatic changes have always happened because of the wishes and actions of the weak majority not because of the politicians. So let us act. But let us do this now, before it is too late.

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