SAUDI BORDER GUARDS KILL 100s OF ETHIOPIAN MIGRANTS – HRW
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Saudi border guards fired “like rain” on Ethiopian migrants trying to cross through Yemen into the Gulf kingdom, killing hundreds since last year, Human Rights Watch said in a report Monday.
The allegations which a Saudi government source has deemed “unfounded,” point to a significant rise in abuses along the perilous “Eastern Route” from the Horn of Africa to Saudi Arabia, where hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians live and work.
“Saudi officials are killing hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers in this remote border area out of view of the rest of the world,” HRW researcher Nadia Hardman said in a statement.
“Spending billions buying up professional golf, football clubs, and major entertainment events to improve the Saudi image should not deflect attention from these horrendous crimes.”
A Saudi government source told AFP: “The allegations included in the Human Rights Watch report about Saudi border guards shooting Ethiopians while they were crossing the Saudi-Yemeni border are unfounded and not based on reliable sources.”
The New York-based group has documented abuses against Ethiopian migrants in Saudi Arabia and Yemen for nearly a decade, but the latest killings appear to be “widespread and systematic” and may amount to crimes against humanity, it said.
Last year, UN experts reported “concerning allegations” that “cross-border artillery shelling and small-arms fire by Saudi Arabia security forces killed approximately 430 migrants” in southern Saudi Arabia and northern Yemen during the first four months of 2022.
The HRW report said there was no response to letters it sent to the Saudi interior and defence ministries, the human rights commission and Huthi rebels who control northern Yemen.
In 2015, Saudi officials mobilised a military coalition in an effort to stop the advance of the Iran-backed Huthis, who had seized the Yemeni capital Sanaa from the internationally recognised government the previous year.
Yemen’s war has created what the United Nations describes as one of the world’s worst humanitarian situations.
But many of the abuses described by HRW would have occurred during a truce that took effect in April 2022 and has largely held despite officially expiring last October.
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