The NGO Amnesty International has denounced the forced return of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian migrants after being detained in «arbitrary and abhorrent» conditions in Saudi Arabia, and called for the investigation of numerous cases considered as possible crimes of torture and the circumstances surrounding at least a dozen deaths in custody between 2021 and 2022.
This practice has been going on since 2017 and right now, according to the NGO’s estimates, there are more than 30,000 Ethiopian nationals detained in these conditions just for the mere fact of not having legal identification documents.
Saudi Arabia is home to around ten million migrant workers but the case of Ethiopians is particular. In March this year, the Saudi authorities announced their intention to deport some 100,000 undocumented Ethiopian migrants – men, women and children – by the end of the year, all with the connivance of the Ethiopian government.
At the heart of it all is the kafala or «sponsorship» system, denounced by numerous NGOs as a model of labor exploitation whereby undocumented migrants risk being expelled from the country if they report abusive labor practices.
Amnesty International also interviewed former detainees who described torture and beatings in the detention centers of Al Jarj (in the capital Riyadh) and Al Shumaisi (near the city of Jeddah), both overcrowded and without easy access to medical care in case of emergency, common due to the unsanitary conditions in which they lived in overcrowded conditions to the point that they were forced to burn their hair to kill lice.
The NGO has also documented cases of deaths in both facilities, ten between April 2021 and May 2022, many of which occurred after being denied critical medical care, including in one case after injuries sustained from beatings. Amnesty International is calling on the authorities to investigate these deaths in custody and the extent to which they are related to the lack of care.
«Saudi Arabia has been aggressively investing in rebranding its image,» lamented Amnesty International’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, «but underneath this glitzy veneer is a history of horrific abuse against migrants who have been working hard to help the country realize its grand vision.»
«The ongoing abuses, which in some cases resulted in the deaths of migrants, indicate the unwillingness of the Saudi authorities to improve the treatment of workers, and they must urgently investigate the deaths and torture of detainees or, better yet, they should stop detaining them in the first place,» he lamented.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
