Other countries are much less kind to illegal immigrants than America is. Saudi border guards have repeatedly fired “explosive weapons” on Ethiopian migrants trying to cross into Saudi Arabia from Yemen, and shot many others at close range. Thousands have been killed since last year.
The killings occurred on 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,” notes a human rights researcher. The latest killings are widespread and systematic and may amount to crimes against humanity in violation of international human-rights treaties.
Last year, UN researchers described how “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.
Interviewees described 28 “explosive weapons incidents” including attacks by mortar projectiles. Some survivors described attacks at close range, with Saudi border guards asking Ethiopians “in which limb of their body they would prefer to be shot.” “All interviewees described scenes of horror: women, men, and children strewn across the mountainous landscape severely injured, dismembered, or already dead.” One 20-year-old woman from Ethiopia’s southern Oromia region said Saudi border guards fired on a group of migrants they had just released from custody. “They fired on us like rain. When I remember, I cry,” she said. “I saw a guy calling for help, he lost both his legs. He was screaming; he was saying, ‘Are you leaving me here? Please don’t leave me.’ We couldn’t help him because we were running for our lives.”
“If migrants are captured, they are reportedly oftentimes subjected to torture by being lined up and shot through the side of the leg to see how far the bullet will go or asked if they prefer to be shot in the hand or the leg,” UN researchers said. “Survivors of such attacks reported having to ‘play dead’ for a period of time in order to escape.”
Saudi officials have not responded to requests for comment from the press, or letters sent to the Saudi interior and defense ministries. The killings were described by 38 Ethiopian migrants who tried to cross into Saudi Arabia from Yemen and experienced shooting at close range, and are confirmed from satellite imagery and videos and photos posted to social media “or gathered from other sources.”
Earlier this year, dozens of Ethiopian migrants were burnt alive in a prison in northern Yemen, which is controlled by the anti-American Houthis. War-torn Yemen is a nation southeast of Saudi Arabia and across the red sea from Africa (Ethiopia is just inland from Africa’s Red Sea coast, which is across from Yemen). The Houthis sometimes kill and expel Ethiopian migrants.
War-torn Yemen is divided between areas controlled by the anti-American Houthis, who control northern Yemen, and the pro-Saudi official government of Yemen, which controls parts of southern Yemen.
