Saudi Arabia's border guard systematically fires machine guns and mortars at Ethiopian migrants trying to cross into the kingdom from Yemen, killing hundreds of unarmed people in recent years, including numerous women and children, says Human Rights Watch in a report published yesterday.
The human rights group cites witnesses and analyzed images showing corpses and burial sites along migration routes, saying the death toll could be "possibly in the thousands". The "widespread and systematic" killing of Ethiopian immigrants could even constitute a crime against humanity, they denounce.
"Saudi authorities are killing hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers in the remote border area, far from the view of the rest of the world," said HRW migration specialist Nadia Hardman. The "billions spent" on sporting events and entertainment "to improve the image of Saudi Arabia" should not distract the world from "these horrific crimes".
About 750,000 Ethiopians live in Saudi Arabia, and up to 450,000 are likely to have entered the kingdom illegally, according to 2022 statistics from the International Organization for Migration. The civil war in the northern Tigre region has displaced tens of thousands of Ethiopians. Saudi Arabia, which is fighting youth unemployment, has been returning thousands of people to Ethiopia.
"While HRW has documented killings of migrants on the border with Yemen and Saudi Arabia since 2014, these killings appear to be a deliberate escalation in both the quantity and form of selective killings," the report says. .
HRW spoke to 38 Ethiopian immigrants and four family members of people who tried to cross between March 2022 and June 2023. The group also analyzed more than 350 videos and photographs taken between May 12, 2021 and July 18, 2023 and has examined satellite images captured between February 2022 and July 2023.
Those interviewed by HRW talk about "explosive weapons", shots fired at gunpoint and Saudi border guards asking "which part of the body they would prefer to be shot at". There are stories of real terror: "women, men and children scattered across the mountainous landscape, seriously injured, dismembered or already dead", they report.
"They were shooting at us, it was like a rain (of bullets)", testified a 20-year-old woman. "I saw a man asking for help, he had lost both legs", but "we couldn't help him because we were running to save our own lives".
Hamdiya, a 14-year-old Ethiopian girl, explains that the guards shot them "repeatedly". "I saw people killed in a way I had never imagined. I saw 30 dead people. I pushed myself under a rock and slept there."
A 17-year-old boy said he and other survivors were forced to rape two girls after they executed another migrant who refused to do so.
The migrants said they crossed the Gulf of Aden in rudimentary boats and were taken to Sadah governorate by Yemeni traffickers. Many said the Houthis collaborated with the smugglers and extorted them or moved them to detention centers, where they were abused until they could pay an "exit fee" to the Saudi border.
The UN has denounced that the Houthi rebels "collaborate with traffickers to systematically direct migrants" to Saudi Arabia and generate profits of around $50,000 a week. The Houthis have controlled Yemen's capital, Sana'a, since September 2014. A coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been fighting them since March 2015, without succeeding in dislodging them from the capital.
An October 3, 2022, letter sent by the UN to Riyadh said investigators had “received reports of cross-border artillery shelling and small arms fire, allegedly by Saudi security forces, which caused the death of up to 430 migrants and injured another 650”. "If migrants are captured, according to reports, they are often subjected to torture," the letter stated.
In response, Riyadh said it "categorically refutes" the accusations. However, he added that the information provided by the UN was "limited", so he could not "confirm or corroborate the allegations".
