Hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers were killed by Saudi border guards between March 2022 and June 2023, accuses the American organization Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a damning report released Monday, August 21, ““They rained the shots on us”: the massacres of Ethiopian migrants by Saudi Arabia on its border with Yemen”. The number of victims could be much higher and reach thousands, according to human rights activists, who have seen an increase in burial sites on both sides of the border with Yemen.
The migratory route HRW investigated is much less highlighted than that from Libya to Europe. But death, threats and racketeering are also commonplace on this trajectory, taken by the majority of Ethiopians, but also Eritreans and Somalis, from the Horn of Africa to a supposed Eden: rich Saudi Arabia. Those who survive the sea voyage from Djibouti to the Yemeni port of Aden find themselves under the law of smugglers acting in collusion with Houthi rebels to travel back to war-torn northern Yemen. Once parked in camps neighboring Saudi Arabia, they attempt to cross the mountainous border.
Based in particular on the testimony of 38 migrants who attempted to cross and on satellite images, HRW accuses the Saudi border guards of having shot dead men, women and children at close range, and of having used explosive weapons to repel them. The organization denounces a “deliberate escalation” in “murders” which she has been documenting since 2014.
Mortar fire
Both individuals and groups of up to 200 migrants have been targeted. In June 2023, Ethiopians who had just been deported to the Yemeni border after being intercepted and detained by Saudi guards came under mortar fire, according to 20-year-old Munira’s testimony: “When I think about it, I cry. I saw a man calling for help, he had lost both his legs. He was screaming, he was saying, “Are you leaving me here? Don’t leave me!” We couldn’t help him because we were trying to save our lives. » The injured young woman told HRW that she was determined to try to cross the border again.
“If it were proven that these murders, the practice of which continues today, were committed within the framework of a policy of the Saudi government intended to kill migrants, they would constitute a crime against humanity”, warns HRW. Its report focuses on deadly violence on the border, but the organization does not exempt Houthi rebels, who control the area where the migrant camps are located and “play a considerable role in the abuse (…) along the migratory route, where the racketeering is continuous.
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