Amid Yemen’s chaos, migrants stream in only to face torment
After reaching Yemen’s shores in a packed migrant boat, the young Ethiopian coffee farmer was plunged into a living hell. The smugglers wanted thousands of dollars in ransom from the migrants, and they used him as an example of what would happen if they didn’t pay. Each day for a month, they inflicted new tortures on him, Omar Farrag said. They put him in a tank of water and lit a fire underneath it. They wrapped his limbs with tight barbed wire. At times, they heated the barbed wire.
Finally, his younger brother came from Ethiopia with $2,000 in ransom money. The smugglers decided they could squeeze more money out of him too, so they tortured his brother and ended up killing him, Farrag said. Now in the southern Yemeni city of Aden, the 26-year-old is overcome with guilt over his brother’s death. “I got my brother killed; I am a disgrace. But it’s impossible to imagine what I went through,” Farrag said. “I don’t even know where they buried him.”
Migrants from the Horn of Africa are flowing into Yemen at ever growing rates despite the nearly 2-year-old civil war that has thrown the country into its own humanitarian crisis of hunger and displacement. The migrants - many, like Farrag, fleeing drought or poverty back home - are hoping to cross Yemen and reach neighboring oil-rich Saudi Arabia. More than 111,500 migrants landed on Yemen’s shores last year, up from around 100,000 the year before, according to the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat, a grouping of international agencies that monitors migration in the area.
Abuse and cruelty
The chaos caused by the civil war has raised migrants’ hopes that they can slip through to Saudi Arabia, with no central authority keeping watch. However, the turmoil has also left migrants vulnerable to abuse and cruelty at the hands of the armed trafficking rings, many believed connected to and acting with protection from the multiple militias involved in the war. After taking migrants’ money as payment to transport them, the traffickers often demand more, sometimes even phoning their families in Ethiopia so they can hear the torment their loved ones are subjected to.
Rape is so widespread that women carry contraception for fear of becoming pregnant. “Migrants don’t know they will have to pay twice: Once when they take the boat to cross the sea and a second time upon arrival,” said Laurent De Boeck, head of Yemeni operations of the International Organization for Migration, or IOM. “So when they don’t pay, this is when the phase of abuses begins. They face torture, burns and rape.”
Fate of migrants
The fate of migrants in Yemen remains a black hole. It is not known how many become trapped and abused, but officials from the IOM and other UN agencies believe it is widespread. It is not even known how many eventually make it to Saudi Arabia, as the kingdom does not release figures. Authorities in southern Yemen have carried out forced deportations of migrants at least seven times, IOM officials said. In December, at least 25 drowned when they were forced onto boats to leave Aden.
The migrants were rounded up, packed onto small boats - as many as 150 to a vessel - and forced out to sea, according to Yemeni security officials in Aden. “They were led like animals with nothing with them but water,” said one senior officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press. Over 90 percent of the migrants belong to the Oromo community, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, whose members often complain of discrimination at the hands of the Ethiopian government. Most are aged 25 and younger - some as young as 11, said Esam Al-Makhzomi an IOM official in Aden. According to IOM figures, around 20 percent of the migrants are unaccompanied minors. “There was an impression that the numbers are going down but in fact ... the numbers are huge and they continue to grow,” he said.
Torture is rampant
He described trafficking as “an organized criminal ring . ... Nothing is random here.” He said torture is rampant, aiming at scaring migrants and forcing them to pay more money. He said some local security and government officials provide cover for the traffickers. “There is torture, rape, and we have seen severe cases of abuse where the migrants lose their lives,” al-Makhzomi said. Nearly 30 percent of the migrants who have sought IOM help to return home said they had been approached by one of the warring parties in Yemen - or by militant groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group - trying to recruit them as fighters, de Boeck said. An estimated 9,000 migrants are being held in prisons, whether by the rebels or by opposing factions. — AP