Pak Sahafat – Criticizing the inhumane conditions of hundreds of Ethiopian immigrants in Saudi Arabia, Amnesty International announced that these immigrants will be forcibly returned to their country after being arbitrarily detained by Al Saud.
According to the international group of Pak Sahafat news agency, Hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian migrants are being forcibly returned by Saudi authorities after being arbitrarily detained in “brutal and inhumane” conditions, Amnesty International said.
According to Al-Khalij Al-Jadeed, this issue was published in a report entitled “As if we were not human: Forced return and deplorable detention conditions of Ethiopian immigrants in Saudi Arabia”.
Amnesty International announced that the forced return of Ethiopian immigrants is due to not having valid residence documents; A situation that has been aggravated by the arbitrary system of Saudi Arabia.
The organization called on Saudi authorities to investigate cases of torture as well as at least 10 deaths of Ethiopian migrants in custody between 2021 and 2022.
This report describes the case of Ethiopian men, women and children who were arbitrarily detained in the overcrowded Al-Kharj and Al-Shamisi detention centers in horrific and humiliating conditions and forcibly returned to Ethiopia between June 2021 and May 2022.
Hebe Maraif, director of the Middle East and North Africa department at Amnesty International, emphasized: Since 2017, Saudi Arabia has arbitrarily detained hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian immigrants in abusive and inhumane conditions and forcibly returned them to their own country, to the point where many have serious long-term physical and mental illnesses.
He further added: Now more than 30 thousand Ethiopian immigrants are kept in similar conditions and are in danger. If someone does not have legal documents, it does not mean that they should be deprived of their human rights.
Between May and June 2022, Amnesty International spoke with 11 Ethiopian migrants who had been detained in Saudi Arabia before forced repatriation, as well as with a family member of a former prisoner, humanitarian workers and journalists familiar with the situation inside migrant centers.
Since 2017, Saudi Arabia has intensified the detention and forced repatriation of Ethiopian migrants as part of a crackdown on illegal migrant workers in the country.
According to Amnesty International, today at least 30,000 Ethiopian immigrants are detained in Saudi Arabia only because they do not have legal residence, and they are still in overcrowded detention centers and in deplorable conditions.
Amnesty International spoke to former detainees, describing overcrowding and unsanitary conditions at Al-Kharj detention center in Riyadh and Al-Shamisi detention center near Jeddah as “inhumane”.
Bilal, a former detainee who was held in Al-Shamisi Detention Center for 11 months, said that they were in their detention room with 200 other people, but there were only 64 beds. Detainees had to take turns sleeping on the floor. “As if we were not human.”
Amnesty International also documented the deaths of Ethiopian migrants in Al-Kharj and Al-Shamisi detention centers in March 2022. Ethiopian detainees reported 10 deaths between April 2021 and May 2022, many of which occurred after being denied access to urgent medical care.
Although slavery has been officially banned in Saudi Arabia since 1964, many foreign workers in this country currently live in slave-like conditions, and documentary reports are regularly published showing that foreign workers in this country face problems such as working more than exhaustion, torture and even deprivation of water and food.
Ethiopia is the most prominent African country that has the largest number of immigrants in Saudi Arabia; While the statistics of human rights organizations indicate horrible reports about the conditions of African workers and immigrants in Saudi Arabia.
Recently, Ethiopian civil society organizations have launched a social media campaign to highlight the suffering of African laborers in Saudi Arabia to show their inhumane conditions in Saudi prisons. Ambai Veldi, the director of law enforcement in the Ministry of Peace of Ethiopia, announced that the number of Ethiopian immigrants in Saudi Arabia is currently about 60 thousand people, most of whom are in Saudi Arabia’s prisons in very poor conditions.
The Telegraph newspaper wrote that the Saudi authorities strip and shackle African immigrants in prison during the inspection.