(This version of the Feb. 4 story corrects venue of gathering to Warwick University in paragraph three)

Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkol Karman of Yemen looks on during a news conference as part of the Nobel Women's Initiative to gather a first-hand account of the ongoing violence against women land defenders, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Jorge Cabrera

DUBAI (Reuters) - Yemeni Nobel Prize winner Tawakkol Karman was suspended from an Islamist party allied with President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after she accused the Saudi-led coalition that backs him in the country’s civil war of acting as occupiers.

Karman won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her role in Arab Spring protests that ousted authoritarian President Ali Abdullah. More recently she has ramped up public criticism of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, accusing them of backing a campaign to divide Yemen by supporting southern separatists against the internationally recognized government.

Speaking at the Warwick Economics Summit at Britain’s Warwick University over the weekend, Karman said Saudi Arabia and the UAE were driven by a “reckless adventurism” when they intervened in Yemen in 2015 after Iran-aligned Houthi forces drove Hadi into exile.

In an earlier Twitter message, she wrote: “Saudi Arabia and UAE took advantage of the (Houthi) militia coup in Sanaa to launch a very ugly occupation and an uglier influence in Yemen.”

The Islah party, regarded as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is viewed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE as a terrorist organization, tried to distance itself from Karman and order her suspended from its ranks.

“Tawakkol Karman’s statements do not represent the Islah party and its policies, and are not in line with the party’s positions,” a statement posted on Islah’s website said.

“Therefore, the general secretary has decided to freeze her membership according to the party’s status.”

Karman, who left Yemen after Houthi militia seized the capital Sanaa in a series of military advances that began in late 2014, responded on her Twitter account by describing Islah leaders as “prisoners and slaves” of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

Tensions between Islah and southern separatists have been rising since Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, announced a boycott of Qatar in June last year over allegations that Doha backs Islamist militants. Qatar denies the charges.

Islah, eager to ease the worries of Gulf Arab states about its Islamist leanings, has sought to distance itself from the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood denies accusations from conservative Arab governments of involvement in terrorism, saying it seeks democracy by peaceful means only.

The southern separatists want to restore the independent state of South Yemen, which merged with North Yemen in 1990. They have fought the Houthis alongside Hadi’s forces, but rose up last week and seized control of the southern port of Aden after Hadi refused to sack his prime minister, whom the separatists accuse of mismanagement and corruption.</s>DUBAI - Yemeni Nobel Prize winner Tawakkol Karman was suspended from an Islamist party allied with President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after she accused the Saudi-led coalition that backs him in the country's civil war of acting as occupiers.

Karman won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her role in Arab Spring protests that ousted authoritarian President Ali Abdullah. More recently she has ramped up public criticism of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, accusing them of backing a campaign to divide Yemen by supporting southern separatists against the internationally recognized government.Speaking at the Warwick Economics Summit in London over the weekend, Karman said Saudi Arabia and the UAE were driven by a "reckless adventurism" when they intervened in Yemen in 2015 after Iran-aligned Houthi forces drove Hadi into exile.In an earlier Twitter message, she wrote: "Saudi Arabia and UAE took advantage of the (Houthi) militia coup in Sanaa to launch a very ugly occupation and an uglier influence in Yemen."The Islah party, regarded as a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is viewed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE as a terrorist organization, tried to distance itself from Karman and order her suspended from its ranks.</s>If you look past all that hype, the Nobel Peace Prize has long been a laughing stock, but it has now, to all intents and purposes, been reduced to a total political circus, with none of the gravitas still commanded by its sister awards for scientific and academic advancement.

When realpolitik power-broker Henry Kissinger won it in 1973, the celebrated American satirical songwriter Tom Lehrer famously quipped that the award had just about rendered political satire obsolete.

That was because the world beyond the Norwegian Nobel Committee was calling Kissinger a war criminal for his culpability in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the 1960s and ‘70s.

There have been other highly undeserving winners over the years since, and even more ludicrous nominations as well.

Which is why I’m not overly incredulous that a bunch of China-hating, Beijing-baiting US politicians are seeking to make Nobel laureates this year of Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Nathan Law Kwun-chung and Alex Chow Yong-kang – student leaders of the 2014 Occupy protests and darlings of the Western media.

Why Hong Kong Occupy trio are my Nobel Peace Prize guys

In a hyperbole-filled sales pitch to Oslo, the congressional nominators painted the trio, who are now the youthful faces of anti-Beijing politics in this city, as “champions of peace and freedom and Hong Kong’s entire pro-democracy movement”.

“The government can lock up our bodies but they cannot lock up our minds!” they admiringly quoted Wong as declaring, unabashedly aggrandising the student activist to the lofty level of Mahatma Gandhi, the global symbol of non-violent struggle whom he borrowed and adapted those famous words from.

How ironic that the Nobel committee, which rejected India’s independence icon and giant of history no less than five times for the peace prize, is now being asked to award it to a political pygmy by comparison.

When will people looking at and judging Hong Kong from the outside realise that we have no martyrs for democracy here, only muppets masquerading as them.

The only champions of peace and freedom in this city are the people of Hong Kong themselves who demand and enjoy it every day. Sure, we could use some more democracy and electoral reform, but we’re nothing like the oppressed, rights-starved masses that we’re regularly portrayed as by the Western narrative.

China rebukes ‘meddling’ US congressmen over Nobel Peace Prize nomination for Hong Kong’s Joshua Wong

It’s quite obvious that there are no noble intentions behind this Nobel nomination – only a cynical attempt to troll China – but let’s also question the significance and relevance of the award itself these days.

At the end of the day, the peace prize is a political tool for spreading the Scandinavian brand of cultural imperialism, a sadly diminished honour bandied about once a year by a largely insignificant country with little to zero other means to seek relevance on the global stage.

Why are we still giving the time of day to a cabal of purported intellectuals huddled together in Oslo to spread their confused vision of a better world in such a questionable manner?

It’s high time we had an untainted alternative for this part of the planet – and I’m glad to see the Shaw Prize and Lui Che Woo Prize laying the preliminary groundwork for such a future.

In his will, Alfred Nobel envisioned his peace prize would be awarded to those “who have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.

You know who would be a worthy recipient in that context? The nuclear bomb itself. God knows it’s done more for world peace than anyone else as a grim deterrent against the apocalypse.

We’re all watching an annual freak show anyway.

Yonden Lhatoo is the chief news editor at the .
2011 Nobel Peace Prize co-winner Tawakkol Karman is ordered suspended from the Islah party's ranks after she likened the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen to "reckless adventurism" and "ugly occupation".