http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-01/yemeni-people-traffickers-prey-on-ethiopia-migrants-seeking-work.html
Traffickers prey on Ethiopian migrants
Economic hardships force exodus
By William Davison, Bloomberg June 4, 2014 4:34 AM
Each year tens of thousands of Ethiopians and Somalis make the perilous
crossing to Yemen in the hope of a better life. While unrest is uprooting
families in Somalia, hundreds of others are fleeing from neighbouring
Ethiopia due to economic hardship. *Photograph by: *Tony Karumba, Getty
Images , Bloomberg
Sintayehu Beyene left Ethiopia planning to earn money to begin a carpentry
business. He ended up captive in Yemen where Kalashnikovwielding
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 ($71 US) he was carrying before being
released. He crossed to neighbouring 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," Beyene, 31, said 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."
Beyene 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 Yorkbased advocacy group said in a
recent report. One witness cited by Human Rights Watch 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.
Numbers travelling across the 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 tenfold to 8,000 between January and March,
Human Rights Watch 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 travelling by boat to Yemen from Djibouti
or Somalia increased to 8,356 in April, 56 per cent more than a year
earlier, according to the Nairobi, Kenya-based Regional Mixed Migration
Secretariat, or RMMS. An estimated 82 per cent of arrivals are Ethiopian,
it said.
The number of people illegally travelling by boat to Yemen dropped to
65,000 in 2013 from 108,000 in 2012, Human Rights Watch 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.
"Some of the migrants encountered were actually reattempting their journeys
following deportation from Saudi and Yemen in the last couple of years,"
Noela Barasa, an RMMS spokeswoman, said in an emailed response to questions
about this year's increase. "A perceived labour gap following the massive
deportations may be responsible for spurring movement." Ethiopia has
temporarily banned citizens from travelling to work in Saudi Arabia until
conditions improve and is "sensitizing the public" to the dangers of
illegal migration, 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
Addis Ababa. Yemen's deputy foreign minister for political affairs, Hamid
Alawadhi, said the government takes the Human Rights Watch report
"seriously" and has formed a committee including all authorities accused to
discuss its allegations.
"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 per cent 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 International Monetary Fund.
The nation is also battling an insurgency in its north and a threat from
al-Qaida militants.
Beyene, whose wife died of 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.
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 Africa's fastest-growing economies, with the IMF
projecting expansion of eight per cent this year after average annual
growth of 9.3 per cent over the past four years, almost 40 per cent of the
population lives on less than $1.25 a day, according to the U.S. Agency for
International Development. Agriculture accounts for 43 per cent of gross
domestic product and 82 per cent of Ethiopians rely on subsistence farming,
USAID said in a March 2012 report. Land is state-owned and the average plot
size is less than a hectare. Unemployment was 17.5 per cent 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 recently reported, citing the National Bank of Ethiopia.
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 an 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 per
cent of the area's economy, 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.
Illegally selling alcohol and washing cars, Wondiya says he earned 12,000
riyals ($3,200) in about two months in the Saudi city of 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 Beyene. 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."
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Received on Wed Jun 04 2014 - 09:42:50 EDT