Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2014 00:01:20 +0200
Yemeni People Traffickers Prey on Ethiopia Migrants Seeking Work
By William Davison Jun 2, 2014 4:03 PM GMT+0200
Sintayehu Beyene left <http://topics.bloomberg.com/ethiopia/> Ethiopia
planning to earn money to begin a carpentry business -- he ended up captive
in Yemen where Kalashnikov-wielding traffickers stole what little he owned.
Grabbed from a boatload of migrant workers as it landed on a Yemeni shore,
he says the armed gang whisked him inland to a desert camp. Beaten and
detained for nine days with about 30 other people, he was forced to hand
over the 1,400 Ethiopian birr ($72) he was carrying before being released.
He crossed to neighboring <http://topics.bloomberg.com/saudi-arabia/> Saudi
Arabia, where wages are sometimes more than double the rates paid in
Ethiopia, only to be deported a month later when authorities cracked down on
illegal migrants.
"They robbed and beat me," Sintayehu, 31, said in a May 22 interview in
Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, recalling his treatment at the camp in
northern Yemen five months ago. "They took all the money I had."
Sintayehu may have got off lightly, according to Human Rights Watch.
Ethiopians and other migrants arriving in Yemen have been captured and
tortured by human traffickers planning to extort ransoms that can be more
than $1,000 from their families, the New York-based advocacy group said in a
May 25
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/25/yemen-migrants-held-torture-camps>
report. One witness cited by HRW described captors gouging out a man's eyes
with a water bottle.
Torture is one of the dangers faced by thousands of Ethiopians who travel to
seek work in the Arabian peninsula, where maids can earn $200 a month
compared to the $90 the Ethiopian government estimated in 2012 that an
average college graduate made back home.
Gulf Crossing
Numbers traveling across the <http://topics.bloomberg.com/gulf-of-aden/>
Gulf of Aden have risen this year even after Saudi Arabia, the intended
destination for many, began mass deportations of unregistered employees. The
number of African migrants in the northern Yemeni city of Haradh increased
10-fold to 8,000 between January and March, HRW said in the report titled
"Yemen's Torture Camps: Abuse of Migrants by Human Traffickers in a Climate
of Impunity."
While Saudi Arabia began expelling 160,000 illegal Ethiopian workers in
November, the number of migrants traveling by boat to Yemen from Djibouti or
Somalia increased to 8,356 in April, 56 percent more than a year earlier,
according to the Nairobi, Kenya-based
<http://www.regionalmms.org/index.php?id=2> Regional Mixed Migration
Secretariat, or RMMS. An estimated 82 percent of arrivals are Ethiopian, it
said on May 16.
The number of people illegally traveling by boat to Yemen dropped to 65,000
in 2013 from 108,000 in 2012, HRW said, citing United Nations data. Aid
workers say numbers fell during the second half of last year because Saudi
Arabia tightened border security and threatened to deport illegal workers,
according to the report.
Re-Attempting Journeys
"Some of the migrants encountered were actually re-attempting their journeys
following deportation from Saudi and Yemen in the last couple of years,"
Noela Barasa, an RMMS spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed response to questions
on May 19 about this year's increase. "A perceived labor gap following the
massive deportations may be responsible for spurring movement."
Ethiopia has temporarily banned citizens from traveling to work in Saudi
Arabia until conditions improve and is "sensitizing the public" to the
dangers of illegal migration, <http://www.mfa.gov.et/> Foreign Ministry
spokesman Dina Mufti said. The treatment of Ethiopians in Yemen wasn't
discussed during a recent meeting between government officials of the two
nations, he said by phone from <http://topics.bloomberg.com/addis-ababa/>
Addis Ababa. Yemen's deputy foreign minister for political affairs, Hamid
Alawadhi, said the government takes the HRW report "seriously" and has
formed a committee including all authorities accused to discuss its
allegations.
'Limited Resources'
"Due to Yemen's poor and limited resources in dealing with the flood of
refugees and illegal migrants, as well as weak support from international
institutions, there are problems related to this kind of asylum-seeking,"
Alawadhi said. The government plans to issue a statement responding to the
report, he said, without specifying when.
Yemen's economy contracted 13 percent in 2011, in the wake of protests that
ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the lost output won't be recovered
until next year, according to the
<http://topics.bloomberg.com/international-monetary-fund/> International
Monetary Fund. The nation is also battling an insurgency in its north and a
threat from al-Qaeda militants.
Sintayehu, whose wife died of <http://topics.bloomberg.com/breast-cancer/>
breast cancer last year, reckons he needs 50,000 birr to buy tools and begin
a business in Ethiopia as a carpenter and painter, and a monthly income of
5,000 birr to support himself and his four-year-old daughter.
Before he began looking after his ailing father, he says he earned 80 birr a
day on building sites in Ethiopia's capital, where offices, hotels and
shopping malls are sprouting up. That wasn't enough for his needs, he said.
Subsistence Farming
Economic hardship is the main reason Ethiopian arrivals in Yemen give for
their journey, Barasa said. While Ethiopia, home to about 90 million people,
has one of <http://topics.bloomberg.com/africa/> Africa's fastest-growing
economies, with the IMF projecting expansion of 8 percent this year after
average annual growth of 9.3 percent over the past four years, almost 40
percent of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day, according to the
U.S. Agency for International Development.
Agriculture accounts for 43 percent of gross domestic product and 82 percent
of Ethiopians rely on subsistence farming, USAID said in a March 2012
<http://tinyurl.com/lpxr7jf> report. Land is state-owned and the average
plot size is less than a hectare (2.5 acres). Unemployment was 17.5 percent
in Ethiopian towns and cities in 2012, according to the IMF.
Ethiopians sent home $3 billion in the last nine months, outstripping
earnings from exports of goods of $2.3 billion, Addis Ababa-based Capital
newspaper reported May 25, citing the National Bank of Ethiopia.
Alcohol Selling
Wondiya Goshu, 31, says he left school before graduating and hasn't been
able to find work in his home country. He left for his fourth trip to sell
an illicit alcoholic brew in Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter,
around the time his compatriots were being deported last year, he said.
Yemenis kidnapped him off the boat and contacted his friends in Saudi Arabia
to extract a ransom of 3,500 Saudi riyals ($933). Wondiya stayed at a hot,
lice-ridden camp for 28 days with about 60 others, surviving on tepid water
and small portions of rice, he said in a May 22 interview in Addis Ababa.
The trafficking camps are near Haradh, where some government officials
assist smugglers in an activity that may be responsible for about 80 percent
of the area's economy, <http://topics.bloomberg.com/human-rights-watch/>
Human Rights Watch said.
"Officials have more frequently warned traffickers of raids, freed them from
jail when they are arrested, and in some cases, have actively helped the
traffickers capture and detain migrants," according to the report.
Arrested, Deported
Illegally selling alcohol and washing cars, Wondiya says he earned 12,000
riyals ($3,200) in about two months in the Saudi city of
<http://topics.bloomberg.com/jeddah/> Jeddah. He says he was later arrested,
held at an immigration camp, stripped of his possessions and flown back to
Ethiopia.
Such tales aren't enough to discourage Sintayehu. He said he'd travel again
across the Gulf of Aden -- a trip that cost him a total of 6,000 birr last
time -- if he could only find the money.
"I am willing to work here, but the pay is low in comparison," he said. "I
wanted to take a risk; things are better in Saudi."
<http://www.bloomberg.com/photo/sintayehu-beyene-/-iD4ktoDemPNg.html>
http://www.bloomberg.com/image/ino0FMA7FqGM.jpgPhotographer: William
Davison/Bloomberg
Sintayehu Beyene said he'd travel again across the Gulf of Aden - a trip
that cost him...
<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-01/yemeni-people-traffickers-prey-on-
ethiopia-migrants-seeking-work.html> Read More
<http://www.bloomberg.com/photo/ethiopian-immigrants-wait-for-boats-to-cross
-into-yemen-/-iIVbtkGUg_7g.html>
http://www.bloomberg.com/image/in0n8jxwi4L8.jpgPhotographer: Tony
Karumba/AFP via Getty Images
Ethiopian immigrants wait near Obok, north of Djibouti's capital, for
smugglers' boats...
<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-01/yemeni-people-traffickers-prey-on-
ethiopia-migrants-seeking-work.html> Read More
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