Home TRENDING HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH SAYS SAUDI BORDER GUARDS KILLED HUNDREDS OF ETHIOPIAN MIGRANTS.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH SAYS SAUDI BORDER GUARDS KILLED HUNDREDS OF ETHIOPIAN MIGRANTS.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH SAYS SAUDI BORDER GUARDS KILLED HUNDREDS OF ETHIOPIAN MIGRANTS.

SHARE

(Reuters) – (DUBAI/HARAR, Ethiopia) August 21 Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on Monday that Saudi border guards shot and killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants, including women and children, as they crossed the kingdom’s mountainous border with Yemen.

The rights group released a 73-page study claiming that Saudi guards killed migrants using explosive weapons and close-range gunfire. It gathered the accounts of 38 Ethiopians, together with four family members or acquaintances of migrants, who attempted to cross the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023.

Attacks against groups of migrants using mountain trails to cross into Saudi Arabia on foot have been described as “widespread and systematic” by Human Rights Watch, and the organization claims that “killings are continuing” in this context.

On Monday, in an email response to questions from the government’s media office, an unnamed Saudi official said that HRW’s charges were “unfounded and not based on reliable sources.” U.N. officials in 2022 said that Saudi border guards routinely killed migrants. The Saudi government has rejected these charges.

Reuters’ early Monday morning efforts for response from the Ethiopian government in Addis Ababa and the Houthi officials in Yemen went unanswered.

A representative for the U.S. Department of State said the United States had voiced its concerns to the Saudi government over the report’s claims and asked the Saudi government to conduct an inquiry that was both complete and transparent.

The United Nations estimates that there are 750,000 Ethiopians living in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Many have left Ethiopia due to the country’s economic crisis and the violent fighting in the country’s northern Tigray province.
Ethiopian migrants have a well-established passage from the Horn of Africa, across the Gulf of Aden, through Yemen, and into Saudi Arabia, one of the richest countries in the Arab world.

HRW claimed that 350 videos and photographs of injured and deceased migrants, as well as satellite imagery indicating the locations of Saudi Arabian guard posts, formed the basis of their research. However, the advocacy group claimed that its investigators had been denied entry to the area of the Yemeni-Saudi border where the executions were supposedly carried out.

“People told me that they witnessed killing fields: bodies scattered all over the mountain area…people blown in half,” Nadia Hardman, the report’s author, told Reuters.

Since 2022, Hardman claims, there has been a “deliberate escalation in both the number and manner of targeted killings.”

Reuters examined footage provided by HRW showing dead bodies, wounded people, graves being dug, and groups of people walking over the mountains.

Satellite and topography imagery confirmed to Reuters that the movies were recorded near the Yemeni-Saudi border because the roads, buildings, and contour of the mountains all matched. The news organization was unable to establish a filming date.

Mustafa Sofian Mohammed, 22, told Reuters that on July 10, 2022, he and 45 other Ethiopians were nearing the end of a three-day trip to the border when machine gun and grenade fire erupted from Saudi territory, partially amputating Mustafa’s left leg above the ankle.

I asked people if they saw it, and they said yes. Without elaborating on the location of the occurrence, Mustafa added, “That’s when I realized I had no leg anymore, and that’s when I started praying.” He claimed he bandaged his wound with a scarf and was rescued by another group of individuals trying to cross the border.

Mustafa told Reuters in Harar, Ethiopia, that he had been treated at Al Thawra Hospital in Sanaa, Yemen, and then flown to Addis Abeba, where he had his remaining medical expenses covered by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Reuters obtained his medical release paperwork from Hallelujah Hospital in Addis, which revealed that he was admitted as an IOM-sponsored patient and treated there for an infected amputation wound.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) interviewed migrants, including Mustafa, who claimed, “The rest are unreachable…only God knows what happened to them.”

Mustafa’s dad, Sofian Mohammed Abdulla, who is 48 years old, vouched for his son’s story. Mustafa submitted video and photographs to Reuters showing his injured leg, which he claimed to have taken at a hospital in Yemen shortly after the attack. The new organization lacked the means to verify this on its own.

According to the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), a worldwide network of civil society organizations and independent experts who support survivors of torture, there were “clear patterns” of munitions explosions and gunshot wounds in the videos and photographs of dead or injured migrants compiled by HRW.

The UN Human Rights Office said in an email on Monday that it had been watching the situation “for some time” and had received information indicating that military activities near the border had an impact on civilians. It demanded that the HRW charges be thoroughly examined and that the perpetrators be held accountable.

As U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric put it at a press briefing in New York, “trying to stop migration using the barrel of a gun is intolerable.” The report also contains “very serious allegations,” he said.

After receiving reports of the “systematic” killing of 430 migrants at the border in at least 16 events between January 1 and April 30, 2022, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions wrote to Saudi authorities in October 2022.

The Saudi Arabian envoy to the United Nations responded to the complaint in March 2023 with a letter stating that the country’s policies regarding border security “ensure humane treatment…no form of mistreatment or torture is tolerated.”

Writing by Andrew Mills; editing by Daniel Flynn; reporting by Andrew Mills (Gulf Bureau), Tiksa Negeri (Harar, Ethiopia), and Milan Pavicic (Gdansk); additional reporting by Emma Farge (Geneva), Daphne Psaledakis (Washington), and Dawit Endeshaw (Addis Ababa);

SHARE