Yemeni artists commemorate victims of suicide attacks
The Yemeni government has been silent in response to recent deadly suicide attacks, prompting artists to launch a campaign to mourn the dead.
The majority of the world remains unaware of the terrorist attack that rocked Sanaa last Dec. 5, beginning at 9 a.m. It targeted the al-Ourthi military hospital, on the grounds of the Ministry of Defense. This heinous act left 56 people dead, the majority of them doctors, nurses and civilians. Thirty minutes after the attack, early footage of it was televised. Several hours and explosions later, news broke of Nelson Mandela's death, and the rest was forgotten to history.
The next 24 hours were taxing. The public was left uninformed until the Supreme Security Committee (SSC) announced the findings of its investigation. It revealed that 12 suicide bombers, most of them Saudi nationals, had committed a “terrorist act,” wounding 215 on top of those killed. The government hastily attempted to assuage the unnerved masses. First, it televised a five-minute, edited video of the attack. The images, as one might expect, generated collective terror and panic. They also created enough backlash to halt future replays. Second, it declared a nationwide minute of silence. Sadly, silence has been the symbolic and literal response of the government ever since.
Several months later, and in light of the government’s seeming lack of concern, a group of young Yemeni artists decided to commemorate the victims by drawing their faces and names on the walls of the al-Ourthi hospital. They collected 31 photos and 55 names at their own initiative. Two victims were never conclusively identified. To this day, there is no official record list of the names of all the victims. According to the artists who spoke to Al-Monitor, the Ministry of Defense declined their request to paint at the site of the attack just a day before the scheduled event. “Victims are everywhere,” they were told.
Undeterred, on March 6, the volunteers found a new location for their concept, which they named the 8th Hour. “Due to the absence of memorials, the 8th Hour is a kind of protest,” Murad Subay, a graffiti artist, informed Al-Monitor. In 2013, he launched the 12 Hour Campaign, a project to show through illustrations 12 major obstacles, or “hours,” in the path of Yemenis. At the time, he did not anticipate that terrorism would be one of them.
