Yemeni rights group calls for end to Saudi criminal acts, brutality against migrants

A Yemeni human rights group has lambasted Saudi Arabia for inhumane and humiliating mistreatment of migrants and asylum seekers, calling for an international investigation into such rights violations and trial of all those responsible for the atrocities.

Insan Rights and Freedoms Organization, in a statement released on Monday, said it had received reports that Yemeni national Ali Atef al-Aliei, a resident of the western province of Mahwit, was lately arrested by Saudi regime forces near his workplace, taken away to an unknown location, severally beaten up and suffocated to death.

The organization noted that the victim had told his family in Yemen that he was receiving death threats, before they lost communication with him since September 9. His body was recovered at last from al-Manar police station in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

The human rights group noted that Aliei was subjected to heinous and horrific forms of torture, which shows the savagery and brutality of Saudi authorities against migrants and constitutes a flagrant violation of all international principles.

Read more:

• Revealed: Mass grave of dozens of Ethiopian migrants killed by Saudi border guards

Insan Rights and Freedoms Organization called for an in-depth investigation into Saudi crimes against migrants in order to put an end to such abuses and punish all those responsible for the atrocities.

The statement comes days after Yemen’s al-Maisrah television channel released video footage of what it asserted to be a mass grave of African migrants killed at the hands of Saudi border guards.

The footage, broadcast on Saturday, shows pictures of a mass grave containing dozens of Ethiopian citizens who fell victim to the viciousness of the kingdom’s forces.

“Saudi soldiers deliberately electrocuted dozens of Ethiopian migrants in a room where they had gathered,” the channel quoted survivors as saying.

The survivors said Saudi border guards targeted migrants at close range, using mortar shells, adding that they “kill some five immigrants at border every day and injure many more.”

Ethiopians travel to Saudi Arabia for economic reasons and to flee serious human rights abuses back home. 

Back in April, the Arabic-language New al-Khalij news website reported that Saudi authorities had deported hundreds of Ethiopian migrant workers after keeping them for months in detention centers across the oil-rich kingdom under degrading conditions.

Read more:

• Saudi Arabia deports hundreds of Ethiopians after months-long detention, torture

“We returned to our blessed country after six months in prison... but many of our brothers are still suffering, especially in men’s prisons,” a 28-year-old woman said at the time.

“We cried every day. They gave us bread and a pot of cooked rice for 300 people. Sometimes they put up to 400 people in the same room and we couldn’t see the sunlight,” Jamila Shafi told AFP upon her arrival in Ethiopia.

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