Thousands of Ethiopian migrants kidnapped, tortured, raped in Yemen-report
By <
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/our-journalists/katy-migiro/> Katy
Migiro
Sat, 3 Nov 2012 18:01 GMT
NAIROBI (AlertNet) - Migrants travelling from the Horn of Africa to Yemen in
search of a better life are regularly kidnapped, tortured and raped,
according to a new
<
http://www.regionalmms.org/index.php?id=45&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=145&cHash
=cefe2b2cf1eebf3be3120a45b6439db9> report by the
<
http://www.regionalmms.org/index.php?id=2> Regional Mixed Migration
Secretariat (RMMS).
At least 230,000 migrants have undertaken this hazardous, often lethal,
journey over the last six years and the rate of migration is increasing
dramatically. In the first eight months of 2012, over 70,000 African
migrants entered Yemen, three quarters of whom were Ethiopian.
Kidnapping has become increasingly common in Yemen, with the majority of
respondents who arrived in the last 18 months saying they were held for
ransom after disembarking from smugglers boats, said the report from RMMS,
working to help migrants in the Horn of Africa and across the Gulf of Aden.
"If money [was] sent from our friends or relatives, we would be released
and be free. If not, they would beat us to death," one Ethiopian migrant
told the researchers who interviewed some 130 individuals and groups in
Yemen in May and June 2012. "Our group was 35 at first, but three of our
friends died due to the beating."
On average, migrants and their relatives pay the criminal gangs $100 to $300
to secure their release and prevent further torture, the report said.
GOUGING OUT EYES
Common forms of torture by kidnappers include gouging out eyes, pulling out
teeth, hammering nails through hands and feet, severe beatings causing
multiple fractures, and dripping melted plastic or stubbing out cigarettes
on to skin, the report said.
A 15-year-old Ethiopian boy who arrived by boat on the Yemeni coast in
February 2012 told researchers: "They tied a rope round my legs and hung me
upside down and beat me almost to death for three days."
"I was made to watch an Ethiopian woman being raped and an Ethiopian baby
about one-year-old being killed."
A 16-year-old girl said she was gang raped for six months before escaping.
Women are often separated from men and it is unclear what happens to them.
"They set fire to a plastic water bottle and they put it on my hand," one
Ethiopian man captured by gangsters on arrival in Yemen told researchers.
"After that, they take my wife and I don't know where she is now."
Based on interviews with Yemenis and Ethiopian migrants, the report
speculates that such women "may be sold to Saudi Arabia families as virtual
'slave' domestic workers while others are used in clandestine sexual
exploitation networks."
"Trafficking of women appears to be a very serious reality for Ethiopian new
arrivals. Few women who arrive on the shore are seen again."
SUFFOCATION
The migrants leave Ethiopia hoping to find work in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
states. The most destitute walk for weeks to reach the coast, with little
access to food, water or shelter. Others are smuggled in container trucks,
packed to the point of suffocation.
They pay smugglers to take them by boat from Djibouti and Somalia to
war-torn Yemen, which offers a gateway better paid jobs in the Arabian
Peninsula. Yemen's borders are poorly patrolled due to ongoing conflict in
the country.
On the sea crossing, smugglers often beat the migrants, rape women and throw
people overboard if they are sick or the boat is overloaded.
Those who make it ashore and escape the kidnappers often end up working in
Yemen, trying to raise money for the next leg of their journey. The men
generally work on farms producing the narcotic stimulant qat, while women
earn money as cleaners and, less often, sex workers.
Reports from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) say that
some 12,000 predominantly Ethiopian migrants, many in a desperate state,
were sleeping rough in the streets of Haradh, a northern Yemeni city
bordering Saudi Arabia. The charity has paid for over 9,000 stranded
migrants to return home over the last two years.
RMMS believes that the situation is set to worsen.
"Unless the rule of law is applied and the apparent culture of impunity
ends, there seems little to stop the increase of criminality against
migrants," the report concludes.
Economic migrants fall largely outside the protection of refugee law and
have little access to humanitarian aid.
(Editing by Julie Mollins <
https://twitter.com/jmollins> )
http://www.trust.org/contentAsset/resize-image/30c707ce-323f-4f6e-a281-35c73
fc2cf55/photowide/?w=460&h=318&vn=201211021931
Ethiopian migrants sleep out in the open near a transit centre where they
wait to be repatriated in the western Yemeni town of Haradh, on the border
with Saudi Arabia, March 29, 2012. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Received on Sat Nov 03 2012 - 15:11:11 EDT
