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The prospect of paid work and a better life attracted Teshome and Kadir from their native Ethiopia, with their hopes pinned on Saudi Arabia. Instead, the two young men have spent at least five months idle and anguish, confined in one of the kingdom’s migrant detention centers.
They fear they will never get out alive.
“Our situation is above that of the dead and below that of the living,” Teshome, 21, told VOA in telephone interviews from a center in the Saudi port city of Jizan. Complaining about the meager rations of rice, bread and water, the lack of bedding and the unsanitary and overcrowded conditions, she added: “Many of us got sick and some died.”
VOA’s Sept. 2 interviews with Teshome and Kadir, 30, echo those in recent reports. In mid-August, Human Rights Watch reported that at least hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of Ethiopians were detained in Saudi Arabia, in part due to concerns about the pandemic.
UN Migration (IOM) issued a statement Tuesday expanding the detainees’ appeals. Saying it was “alarmed by the deteriorating situation of detained Ethiopian migrants” in Saudi Arabia, IOM called for urgent action, including access to humanitarian aid to ensure the safety of the migrants.
“We cannot emphasize enough the importance of considering detention only as a last resort,” said the IOM, “and of improving conditions in immigration detention.”
Looking for a job
Ethiopian migrants are among the millions of foreigners, mostly from South Asia and Africa, who sought work in the oil-rich kingdom. As the London-based Sunday Telegraph noted in an Aug.30 report on detention conditions, some 6.6 million were working there as of June 2019, mostly in low-wage jobs involving housework, construction or other. physical work.
But migrants have been perceived as possible carriers of COVID-19. Weeks after the World Health Organization’s declaration of a pandemic on March 11, armed Houthi rebels in northern Yemen drove thousands of Ethiopian migrants to the border with neighboring Saudi Arabia, killing dozens as they fled, according to the testimony compiled by Human Rights Watch.
Saudi border guards also reportedly shot and killed dozens more migrants, but others hid in the mountainous field. Within days, some migrants either surrendered or were found by Saudi border guards, who detained them.
Teshome and Kadir, whose real names are withheld to protect them from possible retaliation, were among those arrested. They told the VOA that they hoped to find work after paying traffickers to help them travel from Ethiopia to and through Yemen.
Deportation risks
Riyadh deported nearly 3,000 Ethiopians in the first 10 days of April, The Telegraph reported. Another 200,000 had been scheduled to follow suit, but the United Nations, in an internal memo leaked by the Reuters news agency on April 13, called on the Saudis to suspend mass deportations to reduce the risk of the spread of COVID-19.
Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry said in a Sept. 3 press release that 3,500 of its citizens had been repatriated from Saudi Arabia from April to July. Human Rights Watch told VOA that they were among the most vulnerable migrants, including children and pregnant women, but said women with young children had been detained.
On Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Dina Mufti told VOA that another 274 of the Ethiopian migrants had been returned to Addis Ababa earlier in the week, with another 1,440 expected by October 5. She said the repatriations would continue later.
Mufti did not disclose how many Ethiopian migrants remained in detention in Saudi Arabia.
“The number is fluid,” he said.
He also emphasized the enormity of reaching out to other migrants in the Middle East, then transporting them and quarantining them amid the pandemic. Ethiopia, she said, was committed to bringing its citizens home.
Criticized conditions
The Saudi government did not respond to any of the VOA’s various requests for comment, including the conditions in its detention centers. Those conditions, which detainees describe separately for VOA and other media through encrypted channels, include accounts of physical and mental stress.
Following negative publicity, detainees have reported that their phones are being confiscated and that Ethiopian envoys have warned them not to share their stories.
“I haven’t worn clothes for six months, it’s too hot in here. We are dehydrated, ”Teshome told VOA. At night, at the Jizan facility, several hundred men sleep on the tile floor “only in their underwear, and even then, the heat is unbearable.”
Kadir scanned the room with Teshome’s phone camera, providing a glimpse of partially clothed men huddled on the floor or leaning against the wall. Small windows near the ceiling let in light and possibly ventilation, but not much view.
When toilets overflow, detainees “beg the guards to open the door just to let in air,” Teshome said. “If we go out, they hit us.”
“Imagine being in a room with 360 people, without receiving fresh air for months,” Kadir added later.
Kadir said many of the migrants have developed a mysterious facial rash.
“We are concerned that we will all get it,” he said, lamenting what he called a lack of medical care.
Kadir said he and other migrants were tested for COVID-19 after being transported to the Jizan facility, but were not informed of any positive cases. He added that, given the crowded conditions, “if one of us had the virus, we would all have it now.”
It was unclear, without comment from Saudi officials, whether COVID-19 had been diagnosed in Jizan or any other Saudi migrant detention center. The kingdom had recorded just over 328,000 cases and 4,399 deaths across the country as of Thursday, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Ethiopia had nearly 67,000 cases and 1,060 deaths.
Some detainees from Jizan have become discouraged. Teshome and Kadir said a young man hanged himself in the bathroom, using his marto or traditional wrap as a rope. Since then, the detainees have been more vigilant in controlling each other, the two men said.
Ethiopian detainees have also complained to the VOA and other media of verbal abuse and physical beatings.
“People are suffering, they are still suffering,” Nadia Hardman, the Human Rights Watch researcher who prepared the organization’s report, told VOA in a telephone interview last week.
Referring to Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth, he added: “We are talking about a country that may have the resources to do something about it.”
But the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry, in its press release, [[ ]]thanked, not criticized, Saudi Arabia “for the extraordinary support given to our citizens in general, and to Ethiopian irregular migrants in particular. Ethiopian mission personnel lend a hand when different problems arise and work with the Saudi authorities to resolve them, ”the press release reads.
The Ministry also said that the Ethiopian government must work harder to stop human trafficking, control borders and alert young people to the dangerous realities of illegal migration.
“We are not doing enough,” the ministry said.
Treacherous journeys
IOM estimates that since 2017, at least 400,000 young Ethiopians have crossed into the Arabian Peninsula in search of work, sometimes encouraged by Saudi recruiters or brought in by human smugglers. An IOM study published in May found that at least a third of young Ethiopian migrants seeking work in Saudi Arabia underestimated the potential dangers along the so-called Eastern Route to the Middle East, including the risk of ships capsizing at water crossings and encountering armed people. conflict in Yemen.
Teshome came from the Wollo province in northeastern Ethiopia. The 21-year-old said his family helped him cover the smugglers’ fee of nearly 70,000 Ethiopian birr, or $ 1,900, to get to Saudi Arabia. In Yemen, smugglers demanded more money to complete the journey, so Teshome’s relatives complied, before the Houthi rebels interrupted his plans and sent him fleeing. He said his family does not yet know that he is detained in Saudi Arabia.
“I took a chance and it didn’t work out,” Teshome said. “At this point, I just want to go home to my parents.”
Kadir left his home in the East Harerge area of the Oromia region six years ago and made it to Yemen before running out of money. He did odd jobs like washing cars. But as Yemen’s conflict dragged on, earlier this year it focused on Saudi Arabia. He paid a smuggler but was abandoned before a river crossing. He ended up in a group of at least 200 migrants, walking at night to elude the rebels on their way to the kingdom. Later, he was also taken to the Saudi migrant detention center.
“I’m sorry I left my country,” Kadir said. “If I had known then what I know now, I would never have left my house. I’d rather die there than live here in this inhuman condition. “
This report originated from VOA’s Afan Oromo service, with Eskinder Firew contributing from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Carol Guensburg from Washington.
