Photo : Saleh Obaidi, AFP
NIAS Area Studies
AFRICA MONITOR
Photo : Saleh Obaidi, AFP
IN BRIEF
by Anu Maria Joseph, Jerry Franklin, Ryan Marcus, Sneha Surendran, Nithyashree RB and Prerana P
HRW accuses Saudi Arabia of killing Ethiopian migrants
On 22 August, BBC reported on Saudi Arabian border guards’ mass killing of migrants crossing the border from Yemen. A Human Rights Watch report titled “They Fired On Us Like Rain” stated that hundreds of migrants, most of them Ethiopians, were shot dead by the Saudi Arabian guards. A series of BBC interviews with migrants who are alive revealed that Saudi Arabian guards killed, beat and took the survivors to the hospital in one of the cases. A migrant accused the Houthi rebels of colluding with the smugglers. The HRW report covered the period from March to June 2022 and recorded 34 incidents involving both explosive weapons and shooting at close range. The report identified a detention centre at Yemen’s Monabbih from which the migrants are escorted by armed smugglers to the border. One of the authors of the report, Nadia Hardman said: “People described sites that sound like killing fields - bodies strewn all over the hillside.” Hardman claimed that a minimum of 655 were killed by the Saudi Arabian guards. The Saudi Arabian government responded: “Based on the limited information provided, authorities within the Kingdom have discovered no information or evidence to confirm or substantiate the allegations.” (Paul Adams, “Hundreds of migrants killed by Saudi border guards - report,” BBC News, 22 August 2023)
Libya: 161 Nigerian migrants repatriated under UN scheme
On 22 August, Al Jazeera reported on Libya repatriating 161 Nigerians back to their country under a UN-backed voluntary scheme. The migrants included women and children, and they were assisted at the Tripoli airport by the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM); they arrived in Lagos on 21 August. The report quotes the Minister of Interior of the UN-recognised government based in Tripoli, Imed Trabelsi: “We cannot bear the burden of clandestine migration alone.” A Nigerian embassy official in Tripoli, Samuel Okeri, said that the migrants were “not forced back” to Nigeria. The developments came after 10 August, when Libya and Tunisia agreed to share responsibility to provide shelter to hundreds of migrants stranded at their borders. In July, hundreds of sub-Saharan African migrants were driven to the Libyan border by Tunisian authorities after violence against migrants broke out in the port city of Sfax, following the death of a Tunisian citizen. Previously in February, Tunisian President Kais Saied commented that the sub-Saharan African migrants bring with them “violence, crime, and unacceptable practices.” (“Libya repatriates 161 Nigerian refugees in UN-backed scheme,” Al Jazeera, 22 August 2023)