Stanisland Magazine

NGO accuses Saudi Arabian guards of killing Ethiopian migrants at the southern border.

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), a non governmental organisation tasked with reporting on human rights abuses, border guards in the south of Saudi Arabia have killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants.

The killings are alleged to have taken place between March 2022 and June 2023.

The charity says the Saudi Arabian authorities have killed hundreds in secret, accusing the government of attempting to mask their reputation in attempts to attract visitors to the country. In recent times, they have been in competition with Dubai and others, seeing the writing on the wall regarding oil exports.

The report makes for grim reading

In a seventy three page report, HRW recount the experiences of survivors including a 14th year old named ‘Hamdiya’ who is quoted saying: “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 could feel people sleeping around me. I realized what I thought were people sleeping around me were actually dead bodies. I woke up and I was alone.”

Human Rights Watch say they have interviewed forty two Ethiopian migrants, asylum seekers and/or friends and relatives of those who tried to cross.

The organisation have also allege they have uncovered satellite imagery that shows “dead and wounded migrants on the trails, in camps and in medical facilities, how burial sites near the migrant camps grew in size.”

HRW says the migrants were attempting to cross the border from Yemen.