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More details of the horrific treatment inflicted on African migrants by Saudi officials have emerged in the second report in a month by the Telegraph exposing the “slave” treatment of thousands of Ethiopians stranded in the kingdom.
About 16,000 migrants are being detained in a single Saudi facility, said Ethiopian Consul General in Jeddah Abdo Yassin, adding that it was “just the tip of the iceberg.”
Jeddah has more than 53 prisons. Ethiopians are being detained in each of them, ”Yassin was reported to have said in the Telegraph. “If you take the one in Al Shumaisi … located about 60 km from Jeddah, there are about 16,000 Ethiopians in prison and holding cells.” The Al Shumasi Detention Center is near the holy city of Mecca.
Yassin’s comments shed more light on the appalling treatment of African refugees in Saudi Arabia, which was exposed earlier this month. Hundreds, if not thousands, of black African immigrants are locked up in miserable conditions in Saudi Arabia’s coronavirus detention centers, reminiscent of Libya’s slave camps, according to research by the Sunday Telegraph.
Since then, there has been mounting pressure for the Ethiopian government in Addis Ababa to repatriate migrants trapped in the centers. Last week, nearly 150 women and children were said to have been repatriated to Ethiopia from Saudi Arabia.
READ: African refugees and migrants caught in the Yemen war
However, the details uncovered by the Telegraph have shown that migrants had to buy their own one-way tickets home from Ethiopian Airlines – something the vast majority of impoverished migrants cannot do.
To make matters worse, the Ethiopian embassy in Riyadh announced on Monday that Saudi immigration authorities had annulled the agreement, leaving Ethiopian migrants with no avenues to escape the kingdom.
“It is shocking to hear that as many as 16,000 Ethiopian migrants could be languishing in custody at the Al Shumaisi facility. Human Rights Watch and The Telegraph documented horrific conditions in two other centers in Jazan Saudi Arabia where thousands more Ethiopian migrants may also reside, “said Nadia Hardman, a researcher at the NGO Human Rights Watch.
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