Over a recent 15-month period Saudi border guards have regularly opened fire on Ethiopian refugees crossing into the kingdom from Yemen, killing hundreds of men, women and children, according to a report from Human Rights Watch (HRW). The Saudis are accused of using explosive weapons like mortars against the migrants, of rape, of beating migrants with rocks and bars, and of deliberately shooting prisoners in limbs. Bodies of the unrecovered dead reportedly litter the arid, remote mountainsides,
The authoritative HRW records dozens of harrowing witness testimonies of mass slaughters, describing as “widespread and systematic” the killings which “may amount to” crimes against humanity. The Saudis deny the claims as “not based on reliable sources”, but the BBC and New York Times have corroborated testimonies as have UN rapporteurs, the Mixed Migration Centre. The BBC has evidence the killings are continuing.
One 14-year-old girl, “Hamdiya”, told the HRW: “We were fired on repeatedly. I saw people killed in a way I have never imagined. I saw 30 killed people on the spot. I pushed myself under a rock and slept there...I woke up and I was alone.”
The report estimates the death toll between March 2022 and June 2023 in the hundreds but says that it could be in the thousands.
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According to the UN, tens of thousands a year attempt the journey along one of the world’s most dangerous smuggling routes, crossing by sea from the Horn of Africa to Yemen and then travelling on to Saudi Arabia.
In Yemen, the migrants are taken to territory near the Saudi border controlled by the Houthis, an Iran-backed group that seized Sana and much of the country’s northwest from the internationally recognised Yemeni government in 2014. The report also alleges Houthi collaboration with smuggling gangs and mistreatment of migrants.
The killings further stain Saudi’s abysmal human rights record. The UN must launch an urgent investigation and targeted sanctions at those responsible.