The human rights organization Human Rights Watch said in a report published on Monday that Saudi Arabian border guards have fired machine guns and mortars at Ethiopians trying to cross from Yemen into the kingdom’s territory, possibly killing hundreds of migrants. unarmed in recent years.
The rights group cited eyewitness reports of attacks by Saudi forces and footage showing dead bodies and burial sites on migrant roads, saying the death toll could be “perhaps in the thousands”.
The United Nations has raised the issue with Saudi Arabia over its troops opening fire on migrants in an escalating pattern of attacks along its southern border with war-torn Yemen. Saudi officials did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press, but have previously denied that Arab troops have killed migrants. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who allegedly make tens of thousands of dollars a week smuggling migrants across the border, also did not respond to requests for comment.
About 750,000 Ethiopians live in Saudi Arabia, with about 450,000 likely to have entered the kingdom illegally, according to 2022 statistics from the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The two-year civil war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people.
Saudi Arabia, which faces youth unemployment, has turned thousands back to Ethiopia in cooperation with Addis Ababa.
Human Rights Watch said it spoke to 38 Ethiopian migrants and four relatives of those who tried to cross the border between March 2022 and June 2023, who said they saw Saudi guards shoot migrants or throw explosive devices. on refugee groups.
The report said the group also analyzed more than 350 videos and photos posted on social media or collected from other sources filmed between May 12, 2021 and July 18, 2023. It also examined satellite images of hundreds of square kilometers of registered between February 2022 and July 2023.
“These show dead and injured migrants on trails, in camps and in medical facilities, the increasing sizes of burial sites near migrant camps, the expansion of Saudi Arabia’s border security infrastructure and the routes currently used by migrants to try crossing the border”, says the report.
An April 27 satellite image from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by the Associated Press showed the same tent structures identified by the human rights group near al-Raqw in Yemen, on the Saudi border. Two barrier towers could be seen in that very area across the border in Saudi Arabia.
The site that Human Rights Watch identifies as the Al-Thabit migrant camp can also be seen in satellite images, corroborating the group’s claims that the camp was largely dismantled by early April.
Both areas are in northwestern Yemen, a stronghold of the Houthi rebels. The United Nations has said the Houthi-controlled immigration office “collaborates with traffickers to systematically drive migrants” to Saudi Arabia, which earns them $50,000 a week.
Houthi rebels have controlled Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, since September 2014. A coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been fighting the Houthi rebels since March 2015.
Migrants from Ethiopia have found themselves arrested, abused and even killed in Saudi Arabia and Yemen during the war. But in recent months there has been growing concern from the UN human rights body that Saudi forces are attacking immigrants coming from Yemen.
An October 3, 2022, letter to the Saudi kingdom from the UN said its investigators “received disturbing allegations of cross-border artillery shelling and small arms fire by Saudi security forces that caused the deaths of up to 430 people and wounding 650 immigrants”.
“If migrants are caught, they are often reported to be subjected to torture by being lined up and shot in the leg to see how far the bullet will travel, or asked whether they would prefer to be shot in the hand or the leg,” the UN letter said. “Survivors of such attacks reported having to ‘play dead’ for a period of time in order to escape.”
A letter sent by Saudi Arabia’s mission to the UN in Geneva in March said it “categorically opposes” claims that the kingdom carries out any “systematic” killings on the border. However, she also said the UN provided “limited information” so it could not “confirm or support the claims”.
