Date: Sun, 25 May 2014 23:59:14 +0200
<http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/25/yemen-migrants-held-torture-camps>
Yemen: Migrants Held at 'Torture Camps'
Hold Traffickers, Officials Accountable for Role in Abuses
May 25, 2014
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<http://www.hrw.org/reports/2014/05/25/yemen-s-torture-camps> Yemen's
Torture Camps
Abuse of Migrants by Human Traffickers in a Climate of Impunity
May 25, 2014
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Traffickers are holding African migrants in 'torture camps' to squeeze money
out of their painfully poor families. When you see traffickers openly
loading people into trucks in the center of Haradh, you know that the
authorities are looking the other way.
Eric Goldstein, deputy Middle East and North Africa director
(Sanaa) -Traffickers in <http://www.hrw.org/middle-eastn-africa/yemen>
Yemen hold African migrants in detention camps, torturing them to extort
payment from their families, with the complicity of local officials, Human
Rights Watch said in a report released today. Sometimes the torture ends in
death. The Yemeni government should vigorously investigate and prosecute
human traffickers and members of the security forces involved in the abuses.
The 82-page report, <http://hrw.org/node/125458> "'Yemen's Torture Camps':
Abuse of Migrants by Human Traffickers in a Climate of Impunity,"documents
harms suffered by migrants, most from the Horn of Africa, who try to travel
through Yemen on their way to Saudi Arabia for work. Human Rights Watch
found that various Yemeni security agencies in the border town of Haradh,
where dozens of camps exist, and at checkpoints, allow the human trafficking
industry to flourish with little government interference.
"Traffickers are holding African migrants in 'torture camps' to squeeze
money out of their painfully poor families," said
<http://www.hrw.org/bios/eric-goldstein> Eric Goldstein, deputy Middle East
and North Africa director. "When you see traffickers openly loading people
into trucks in the center of Haradh, you know that the authorities are
looking the other way."
In the coming weeks Yemen's parliament is scheduled to debate an
anti-trafficking bill that could enhance the protection of migrants and make
it easier to prosecute traffickers and complicit officials. The proposed law
should conform to international standards by criminalizing human
trafficking. The law should also increase the government's capabilities to
detect and prevent trafficking at the borders, Human Rights Watch said.
The human traffickers have constructed the camps in recent years. The
traffickers pick up the migrants as they arrive by boat on the coast or
"buy" them from security and military officers at checkpoints, charging the
migrants fees on the promise of getting them to Saudi Arabia or other
affluent Gulf Countries to seek work. In these camps, the traffickers
inflict severe pain and suffering on the migrants to extort money from their
relatives back home or friends already working abroad.
Except for some Yemeni government raids in 2013, the authorities have done
little to stop the trafficking. Officials have more frequently warned
traffickers of raids, failed to prosecute, and then released those they
arrested. In some cases, they have actively helped the traffickers capture
and detain migrants.
Human Rights Watch interviewed 18 male migrants from Ethiopia and 10
traffickers and smugglers, as well as government officials, activists,
diplomats, aid workers, health professionals, and journalists between June
2012 and March 2014.
The migrants described horrific ill-treatment in the camps. Beatings were
commonplace. One man described watching another man's eyes being gouged out
with a water bottle. Another said that traffickers hung him by wire wrapped
around his thumbs, and tied a string with a full water bottle around his
penis. Witnesses said the traffickers raped some of the women migrants they
held.
One migrant ended up trapped for seven days in a traffickers' camp. "They
would tie my hands behind my back and lay me down on the ground. Then they
would beat me with sticks," Said told Human Rights Watch, showing scars
across his back. "I saw the guards kick the face of one man who was on the
floor, breaking his teeth."
Aid workers told Human Rights Watch they observed signs of abuse in migrants
consistent with their accounts of traffickers ripping off fingernails,
burning the cartilage of their ears, branding their skin with irons, gouging
out eyes, and breaking their bones. Health professionals at a Haradh medical
facility said they commonly saw migrants with injuries including lacerations
from rape, damage from being hung by their thumbs, and burns from cigarettes
and molten plastic.
The torture sometimes ends in death. A migrant told Human Rights Watch that
he saw traffickers tie a man's penis with string and beat him with wooden
sticks until the man died before his eyes. Another said that traffickers
killed two men in his group by hacking them with an axe. Migrants tortured
near death are sometimes dumped outside a migrant center in Haradh that is
run by the International Organization for Migration.
Extorting money from the families of captive migrants brings in large sums
of money in Yemen, the Middle East's poorest country. Migrants told Human
Rights Watch that their family members and friends paid ransoms for their
freedom ranging from the equivalent of US$200 to over $1,000. A trafficker
who negotiates ransoms said that he is often able to extract $1,300 per
migrant from their families.
Traffickers transporting Yemeni and African migrants pay standardized bribes
to officials to allow them through checkpoints in border areas. But the
complicity of officials goes beyond petty bribery. Smugglers and migrants
alike said that some checkpoint guards had turned over migrants they
intercept on the roads to traffickers for payment.
One migrant told Human Rights Watch that after he and a friend hadescaped a
torture camp in August 2013, Yemeni soldiers apprehended them at a
checkpoint near Haradh. While the two were fed bread and tea, the soldiers
made some calls. In a short while, two men arrived in a car, paid the
soldiers cash in exchange for the two migrants, and drove them to a torture
camp.
Involvement in trafficking appears to extend to elements within various
state security forces in Haradh, including the police, military and the
intelligence services. Traffickers, smugglers and Yemeni officials provided
Human Rights Watch with the names of senior officials who they said were
complicit in trafficking. Two officials also said that traffickers had
bribed them so they would not be raided or arrested.
On May 20, Human Rights Watch received a
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/20/response-letter-yemens-ministry-defense
-human-rights-watch> letter from the Defense Ministry responding to
questions sent to the ministry in April. The ministry reiterated the
military's resolve to crack down on torture camps that it had identified but
denied any government complicity, including that of checkpoint officers, in
human trafficking. The ministry also stated that no officials had been
investigated on charges of complicity with traffickers.
>From March to May 2013, Yemeni security forces conducted a series of raids
of traffickers' camps. The Defense Ministry said that the security forces
discontinued the raids because they were unable to provide the migrants with
food or shelter upon their release. Officials acknowledged that many of the
camps that security forces had raided are functioning again.
A judge who tries lesser felonies in Haradh said that he had seen only one
case related to migrant abuse, and that the prosecutor had botched it. Nor
did Human Rights Watch find any indication that more serious charges have
been brought in the nearby higher criminal court. Interior Ministry and
other officials could not cite a single case of disciplinary or legal action
against officials for collaborating with traffickers. The Yemeni
government's failure to investigate and prosecute serious abuses committed
against migrants by private parties and the involvement of government
officials violates Yemen's obligations under international human rights law
to protect people from violations of their rights to life and to bodily
integrity.
Saudi border officials have also been complicit in the abuse of migrants, by
apprehending border crossers and turning them over to Haradh-based
traffickers, migrants, traffickers, and Yemeni officials at the border told
Human Rights Watch.
Yemen's government should develop a comprehensive strategy to shut camps
where traffickers detain and abuse migrants, including raids and
prosecutions of traffickers and officials, regardless of rank, complicit in
their activities, Human Rights Watch said. The government should work with
humanitarian organizations to provide all migrants freed from captivity with
adequate food, shelter, and health care.
International donors to Yemen, including the United States, the European
Union and its member states, and the Gulf Cooperation Council states,
including Saudi Arabia, should call on the Yemeni government to shut all
illegally operated places of detention for migrants and take steps to end
the collusion of security force members with traffickers.
"People desperate for work who pay smugglers aren't consenting to being
tortured and robbed along the way," Goldstein said. "Yemen needs to show
zero tolerance toward human traffickers who torture for profit and those who
assist them."
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