Saudi border guards are responsible for the deaths of several hundred Ethiopian migrants trying to cross the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia between March 2022 and June 2023, denounces Human Rights Watch in a new report released Monday, August 21, 2023. Abuses committed while Riyadh has been implementing a broad anti-migrant policy for five years.
Several injured individuals pile up on the back of a truck. Next to them, a body lies on the ground. These images, broadcast on social media, were shot by Ethiopian migrants along the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. They illustrate abuses by Saudi border guards against them, Human Rights Watch said on Monday. Saudi border guards killed hundreds if not thousands of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers trying to cross the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia between March 2022 and June 2023,” the NGO said, opening a new report.
For six months, between January and June 2023, she interviewed by telephone 42 Ethiopians who tried to cross this border or relatives of killed migrants, analysed multiple photos and videos posted on social media and scanned hundreds of square kilometres of satellite images. We have evidence that Saudi border guards are using explosive weapons and shooting at close range at migrants, including women and children,” said Nadia Hardman, migration researcher at the head of the investigation.
“I saw 30 people executed at once”
“We were hit repeatedly. I saw people being killed in ways I had never imagined. I saw 30 people executed at once,” Hamdiya, 14, told Human Rights Watch. I hid under a rock and slept there. I felt that people were sleeping around me. It wasn’t until I realized it was bodies. I woke up and was alone.”
Like the teenager, many witnesses claim to have been victims of mortar fire or other explosives launched by Saudi border guards during their attempt to reach Saudi Arabia, relying on the precise description of their attacker’s uniform to prove their identity.
“One witness explained that in his group of 170 people, 90 people were killed. A figure he was able to put forward because the survivors returned to pick up the bodies,’ the report continues. Out of 150 people, only seven made it out. There were human remains everywhere, scattered,’ another said. According to the document, another person went to the Saudi border to retrieve the body of a girl from his village. Her body was stacked on about 20 others,” she says. “It’s impossible to count the bodies. It’s beyond imagination.” Testimony corroborated by the discovery of several funeral sites on satellite images consulted by the NGO, notes Nadia Hardman.
While the exact number of migrants killed while crossing the border is impossible to determine, the NGO reports several hundred or even thousands of deaths in recent months. Many of the survivors were seriously injured and stranded in makeshift camps in Yemen without access to medical care or resources to leave.
Anti-migrant policy
Every year, tens of thousands of people try to flee the Horn of Africa towards the Gulf countries. Driven by economic hardships, human rights violations and fighting in the region, they set out on the “East Road”, one of East Africa’s most important and deadly migration routes.
After crossing the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden, fatal for many, these migrants find themselves in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia has been leading a military coalition against the Houthi armed group since 2015. In this country at war, itself facing a humanitarian crisis, Human Rights Watch has denounced for several years numerous abuses against these migrants in transit: trafficking, abusive detention, kidnapping, rape, assassinations…
And for several years, their situation has not improved on the other side of the border. Like the other Gulf States, Saudi Arabia was traditionally a preferred destination for migrants, accounting for about 37% of the population. But in 2017, Riyadh implemented a broad “drunkenness” policy, aimed at reducing its dependence on migrant workers, and launched an extensive deportation campaign. Over the past five years, tens of thousands of migrants have been returned to Yemen or to their homes without money, housing or medical care.
The latter thus become pawns at the centre of regional tensions. In April 2020, Houthi fighters, who are engaged in a tug-of-war with the Yemeni central government, forcibly expelled thousands of Ethiopian migrants in the north of the country, forcing them to go to the Saudi border. Dozens of them were killed and many survivors were sent to detention centres on the border. In 2019, HRW had listed ten prisons and centers in which migrants were imprisoned in the kingdom, which has never ratified the main international instruments relating to the imprisonment of migrants.
“While Human Rights Watch has been documenting and warning of migrant killings on the Yemen-Saudi Arabia border since 2014, these new revelations show a further escalation of violence with killings that have become systematic”, concludes the NGO report.
“In recent years, Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in diverting attention from its human rights record, including spending billions to host major cultural or sporting events,” he said. But as she tries to whitewash her image, she shoots unarmed civilians with explosive weapons.”
“If this is the result of a Saudi government policy to murder these migrants, then it is a crime against humanity,” Hardman said, which calls for an international investigation under the auspices of the UN and urges participants in major international events sponsored by the Saudi government to speak out publicly on human rights issues.
