Ethiopian migrants presumed dead after being forced into sea

Photo credit: IOM. African migrants rescued by IOM in 2015.

TMP – 14/02/2018

At least 22 Ethiopian migrants are missing off the coast of Yemen after being forced into the sea, the United Nations migration agency (IOM) has said. The disappearances are only the latest in a series of disappearances and deaths of migrants attempting to cross into Yemen and then across the Mediterranean to Europe since the beginning of the year.

IOM director of operations and emergencies Mohammed Abdiker said on Twitter that people in the last of four boats carrying migrants were forced to swim to shore as they approached Yemen’s Shabwa province from Somalia.
“We understand that passengers on the boat had been dropped into deep water and forced to swim to shore. No bodies have been recovered but 22 remain unaccounted for,” IOM spokesman Joel Millman told a regular UN briefing in Geneva. He gave no further details of the incident.

“Despite the difficult security problems in Yemen, it’s still a migrant transit point and we’re still hearing about these reports pretty frequently,” he said.
About 600 Ethiopian migrants, men and women, were aboard the boats, Millman said — an unusually large number of migrants to arrive off Shabwa at one time.

According to data released by IOM, some 87,000 people sought to reach Yemen from the Horn of Africa by boat in 2017.
UN agencies have tried to warn migrants from countries such as Ethiopia and Somalia about the risks of attempting such dangerous journeys.
Last month, a boat capsized off Yemen and killed at least 30 Africans. IOM blamed “unscrupulous smugglers” who tried “to extort more money” from the migrants. Survivors reported gunfire as the boat capsized.
UN agencies have blamed the prolonged Yemeni conflict for subjecting migrants to the risk of human rights violations, including arbitrary arrest, detention, trafficking and deportation.