Saudi Arabia’s forces are accused of using indiscriminate force against migrants on their borders, with reports of deaths and injuries and multiple accounts of women being raped.
Ethiopian migrants attempting to cross from neighbouring Yemen between 2019 and 2024 have given accounts to the Guardian of coming under machine gun fire and of seeing bodies rotting in the border area.
“I personally saw three people die next to me,” said one Ethiopian, who attempted to cross at night into Saudi’s Najran province with dozens of others in 2022. “One of my legs was blown away by the Saudi fire. There were body parts of the injured and the dead all around me.”
Another migrant talked of sustaining shrapnel wounds to his leg and back. A third alleged witnessing the rape of three Ethiopian women by men in Saudi border guard uniforms. Others described beatings and sexual assault.
Another man, who attempted to cross in January 2023, said: “The journey was particularly horrifying. Along the way, we encountered many decomposing bodies that had been eaten by animals. The border guards continued to fire at us as we walked through treacherous terrain.”
Bullets hit two young women, he said. “One was struck in the chest, and the other was struck in the back of her neck. Both the girls died instantly. Many migrants fell off a cliff while trying to escape. Others were captured or injured by gunfire. We have no idea what happened to them. We don’t know whether the two girls were ever buried.”
The testimonies reflect the findings of a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published in August 2023, which found that Saudi border guards killed “hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers” on the southern border with Yemen from March 2022 to June 2023 “in a pattern that is widespread and systematic” using guns and explosive weaponry. The group concluded that these actions may amount to crimes against humanity.
HRW documented one incident when Saudi border guards shot an Ethiopian man who refused to rape two girls after their group survived an explosive weapons attack. They then forced a teenage boy to rape the girls, according to HRW. In another, Saudi border guards asked Ethiopian migrants to choose in which part of their body they preferred to be shot before shooting them at close range.
“There is a complete culture of impunity and unaccountability at the border,” said Nadia Hardman, who authored the HRW report. “It’s impossible to know the true scale of the killings. No one has independent access to these areas. They are basically off limits.”
A spokesperson for the Saudi Arabian government and the Saudi embassy in Ethiopia have been contacted for comment on the allegations.
Saudi Arabia hosts about 750,000 Ethiopian migrants. More than half are believed to have entered illegally. These irregular migrants endure perilous desert treks and sea crossings and rampant abuses by people smugglers, armed gangs and Yemeni rebel groups before they even reach the Saudi border. Those who make it find low-paid work in construction, on farms and as domestic servants.
In recent years, Saudi authorities have launched security operations to detain tens of thousands of illegal migrants and deported them back to Ethiopia. Ahead of hosting the football World Cup in 2034 and building 11 new stadiums, Saudi Arabia is coming under increased scrutiny over migrant workers’s conditions.
The Ethiopians travelling illegally via Yemen in search of work are from areas affected by civil conflict, poverty and the climate crisis. Between 2022 and 2023, the number of Ethiopians making this dangerous journey surged by 32% to reach 96,670, according to the UN. A smaller number of Somalis also take the route.
There is no sign Saudia Arabia has stopped using deadly force to thwart irregular crossings. One Ethiopian migrant, who tried to reach the country from a Yemeni settlement called Al Raqw in December 2024, described Saudi border forces targeting him and 10 other Ethiopians with machine guns and artillery to push them back into Yemen, wounding one.
“Saudi Arabia has thrown its money around to get into the diplomatic fold,” said Hardman from HRW. “It doesn’t really matter what it does, the world just moves on. Unless states dealing with Saudi Arabia send a message saying they will not tolerate abuses, they will sadly continue.”
One man travelled to Yemen in the hope of reaching Saudi Arabia after serving for nearly two years as a rebel fighter in the war that gripped Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region in 2020-2022. Although a ceasefire ended the bloodshed, it did not entice back enough tourists for him to resume work as a guide.
When he arrived in Yemen, he said he was held and tortured by traffickers until his family paid a ransom. After his release, in early 2024, he worked for other smugglers in Al Raqw to pay off the debt, running hidden market cigarettes and other items into Saudi Arabia on trails used by migrants.
“I saw many dead bodies along the way,” he said. “Every trip there would be dead bodies: five in one place, two or three in another. This was normal. There were fresh bodies who had been killed recently. There were bodies that had been there for a while, badly decomposing. Some were skeletons.”
He said he saw cameras on the border, which he believes Saudi guards used to detect migrant movements. He was detained and forcibly deported back to Ethiopia where he spoke to the Guardian at a coffee shop in his home town of Wukro, whose buildings bear the bullet marks of the Tigray war, and which has a long history of migration to the Gulf.
Another man from Wukro spoke from inside Saudi Arabia. He described trying to cross the border four times from 2021 to 2023 and being fired upon and, in May 2023, his group – mostly women – was detained at a border post. He says guards raped three of the women in a building. “After the rapes, the border guards pushed us back, forcing us to return [to Yemen].”
His fourth attempt was successful and he now scrapes a living as a goatherd in the kingdom, earning 800 Saudi riyals (about £170 a month) and sending the bulk of his earnings to family in Ethiopia.
He lives in constant fear. “I can’t say I’m truly living because, at any moment, the Saudi authorities could come and arrest me or even kill me. I can’t sleep peacefully. I always fear they will show up. I can truly say, life here in Saudi is hell on earth.”
The Guardian was unable to obtain comment from the Saudi authorities about these allegations.
