African migrants face abuse in Yemen
On 18 April, Reuters reported that Human Rights Watch (HRW) and UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, have raised the alarm about the physical and sexual abuse of African migrants in Yemeni detention centres.
“Guards at the migrant detention centre in Aden have brutally beaten men, raped women and boys, and sent hundreds out to sea in overloaded boats,” said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch.
Yemen’s Interior Ministry said it had responded to an HRW inquiry into the development by dismissing the centre’s commander and that it had begun to transfer migrants to another location.
HRW said the detention centre in Aden’s Buraika area had since early 2017 held several hundreds of Ethiopian, Somali and Eritrean migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, but as of March this year only about 90, mostly Eritrean, migrants remained.
Former detainees told HRW that that the facility was overcrowded, with dire sanitation conditions and little access to medical care. The provision of food was inconsistent, and guards would occasionally withhold food.
The detainees said the guards sexually assaulted women, girls, and boys regularly. An Ethiopian woman, who had been held at the facility, said she still suffered pain after a guard beat her severely for refusing to have sex with him. She said women and girls were regularly raped and saw guards rape two of her friends.
UNHCR shared the stories of survivors ranging from being shot at, to regular beatings, rapes of adults and children and humiliations, including forced nudity, as well as being forced to witness summary executions, and denial of food.
The refugee agency called on state and non-state actors controlling the detention facilities where new arrivals are being held to ensure that those being detained are treated humanely.
HRW also accused the Houthi armed group that controls northern Yemen of arbitrarily detaining migrants in poor conditions and failing to provide access to asylum and protection procedures in the port city of Hodeida.
Many migrants from the Horn of Africa risk the hazardous journey across the Red Sea and Yemen in the hope of finding work in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
TMP – 11/05/2018
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