Saudi Arabia is one of the cruelest dictatorships in the world, as it promotes mass executions, persecution of opponents and homosexuals, discrimination against women and Christians and other human rights violations.
A new front of repression became better known in August, when the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report accusing Saudi border guards of having killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who tried to cross the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia between March 2022 and June this year.
In addition to the executions already representing a violation of human rights in themselves, many occurred with extreme cruelty, according to HRW: the investigation pointed to the use of explosive weapons, point-blank shooting, execution of women and children and “questions” to victims about which arm or leg they preferred to be shot in.
“The spending of billions of dollars on professional golf tournaments, football clubs and major entertainment events to improve the Saudi image must not distract from these horrendous crimes,” said Nadia Hardman, refugee and migrant rights researcher at HRW, in reference to the sportswashing tactic used by the Riyadh dictatorship to hide repeated human rights violations in the country.
HRW collected information about these cases through interviews with 42 people (38 Ethiopian immigrants and asylum seekers and four family members or friends of people who attempted to cross the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia), analysis of more than 350 videos and photographs and satellite images.
Members of the Independent Group of Forensic Experts of the International Rehabilitation Council for Victims of Torture collaborated in the analysis of videos and photographs and pointed out that the injuries recorded in the images presented “clear patterns consistent with an explosion of munitions with the capacity to produce heat and fragmentation” or “ features consistent with gunshot wounds.”
“They shot at us repeatedly. I saw people being killed in ways I never imagined. I saw 30 people dead at the scene. I hid under a rock and slept there. I could feel people sleeping around me, but they were actually dead bodies. I woke up and I was alone,” a 14-year-old Ethiopian girl told HRW.
In a letter sent to the Saudi government in October last year, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights had already reported that it had received reports of artillery shelling on the border and small arms fire allegedly carried out by Saudi security forces, which would have caused the death of 430 people and injured another 650, including refugees and asylum seekers, in the border provinces of Sa’dah, in Yemen, and Jizan, in Saudi Arabia, in the first four months of 2022.
Following the publication of the HRW report, the Ethiopian government reported on for the investigation to be completed.”
In addition to Ethiopia highlighting that it has “excellent long-standing relations” with Saudi Arabia, the two countries are among the new members of the BRICS, announced in August.
Riyadh, in turn, denied the accusations in the HRW report and blamed alleged “armed groups” – which it did not identify -, according to the official Saudi news agency SPA.
Germany and the US trained border guards
The West, which has ignored human rights violations in Saudi Arabia for decades, has been accused of having contributed to the alleged violence perpetrated by border guards.
A report by the English newspaper The Guardian pointed out that the Saudi border forces accused of these crimes participated in training provided by Germany and the United States.
The training offered by the USA was carried out between 2008 and July this year, and the German training, between 2009 and 2020, according to the newspaper.
In a note sent to The New York Times, the US State Department reported that the United States helped train Saudi border forces between 2015 and this year, but claimed that this partnership focused on water training for sea guards and did not include guards. border on land.
To the Guardian, the German Ministry of the Interior informed that the training offered by the country to Saudi border guards did not take place on the border with Yemen and that it was “discontinued following reports of possible massive violations of human rights and, as a precaution, is no longer included in the current training program [das forças de segurança sauditas]”. However, Berlin did not say exactly when it received these first reports.
#Saudi #border #guards #massacre #immigrants #NGO #reports