Saudi Arabia’s crimes against migrants at borders become largest in world

SANAA, July. 07 (YPA) – Large numbers of migrant workers systematically have been killed and sexually assaulted by Saudi security officials at the Yemeni-Saudi borders.

According to the report published by the Mixed Migration Center, an international network that conducts research and analysis on migration, Ethiopians have been targeted with snipers and mortars, indicating that there is a mass grave containing nearly 10,000 bodies of Ethiopian immigrants who were killed by Saudi forces, while the smell of Rotting corpses along the border with Yemen.

The report noted that the Saudi-Yemeni border has been particularly dangerous in recent years, with some 430 deaths and 650 injuries were recorded between January 1 and April 30, 2022.

It quoted a communication submitted by a number of special rapporteurs and working groups of the United Nations in early October that Saudi forces has pursued a policy of excessive use of firearms to prevent migrants and deterred them from crossing the Saudi-Yemeni border, using snipers and mortars to target individuals, as well as larger groups of migrants, according to eyewitnesses.

There are also allegations that migrants, who caught inside Saudi territory, were shot. The letter includes information about a secret grave in northern Yemen, near the Saudi border, containing up to 10,000 immigrant bodies.

“If migrants are caught, they are often said to be tortured by being stacked and shot in the side of the leg to see how far the bullet will go or asking if they would prefer to be shot in the hand or leg,” added a UN communication. In addition, nearly 13-year old girls were reported to have been raped by Saudi security forces and forced back across the border into Yemen without their clothes.

In independent interviews with survivors by the Migration Center that gave similar accounts of the littering of dead bodies and the stench of rotting corpses permeating the border area. Specifically at the border, local Yemenis in the area have reported seeing piles of corpses lying exposed for long time, often in shallow graves.

“I was there for three months, the brokers telling us to go to the border where migrants were injured trying to cross the Saudi border. We pull them out and take them to the hospital in Saada city, north of Yemen, after the Saudi border guard attack killed them, we dragged their bodies and buried them around the border, this was our daily duty for three months, a 21 years old Ethiopian returnee said.

“The shooting started when we got to the bottom of the mountain, the weapon was fired high by the Saudi police wearing green uniforms with symbols at us, many migrants were either running backwards or forwards and became victims, but I was traveling like a snake after hearing a Saudi police shot to escape from bullets. It helped me to be survived. Six ambulances came and collected the dead, after other police took the survivors away in other cars. However, the Saudi police still leave behind the bodies of many migrants,” (other Ethiopian returnee, 33 years old, told his story.

While the UN communication included information for only part of 2022, it is estimated, based on further information received by the Center, at least 794 people were killed and 1,703 injured as a result of Saudi violations against migrants at the northern border of Yemen during 2022.

“Explosives hurt the migrants, and some of them die in the valley from their wounds because no one taking them back to Yemen,” 35 years old Ethiopian returnee explained. “The immigrants, exhausted from their previous journeys and ill-treatment, were unable to bear the difficulty of traveling up the mountain, which led to falling and dying there.”

“When the security camera catches you, the border guards fire heavy explosives,” Ethiopian returnee, 21 years old added.

The report said the targeted nature and scope of these killings and the fact that the perpetrators operating under the authority of the state make this border crossing exceptionally deadly, noting that this unprecedented case of direct state violence against migrants, which led to the death and injury of hundreds, and constituted crimes against humanity. But it hardly garners any international attention, let alone leads to any concrete action to hold the perpetrators to account.

The report showed that the violence and abuses against migrants from the Horn of Africa towards Saudi Arabia on a scale perhaps could only be compared to Libya, with one stark difference in the case of the Saudi-Yemeni border, where migrants being deliberately targeted and killed by security officials working under the authority of the Saudi government.

It compared the angry reaction to an investigation published in December 2022, with video footage, showing how Bulgarian border guards used live ammunition and shot a 19-year-old Syrian asylum seeker, with happening on the Yemeni-Saudi border, where hundreds of immigrants are killed routinely and indiscriminately through snipers and artillery directly at the hands of state-sanctioned officials.

According to the report: The world may be numb in the face of more stories of immigrant abuse. Perhaps this route is too far into the Global North, because the final destination of this route don’t lead to Europe, we simply care less? Perhaps the perpetrators responsible for these mass killings of migrants working for a country that is too important on the geopolitical stage to be alienated. But the evidence seems to support the fact that a sovereign member of the United Nations is using or authorizing lethal and brutal tactics to execute and injure hundreds of migrants whose only misfortune to seek informal work in Saudi Arabia through illegal entry.

AA