MIGRASYL

News on migration and asylum from around the region - Nouvelles de la région sur les questions de migration et d'asile

Monday, May 26, 2014

[Yemen]: HRW - Migrants Held at ‘Torture Camps’


Picture belonging to the same article:
© 2013 Michael Kirby Smith for Human Rights Watch -
Ethiopian migrant, 19, at a local medical facility in Haradh. He said he was tortured for a month and shot in the leg by traffickers trying to extort money from family members abroad, May 2013.


(Sanaa) –Traffickers in Yemen hold African migrants in detention camps, torturing them to extort payment from their families, with the complicity of local officials, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Sometimes the torture ends in death. The Yemeni government should vigorously investigate and prosecute human traffickers and members of the security forces involved in the abuses.

The 82-page report, “‘Yemen’s Torture Camps’: Abuse of Migrants by Human Traffickers in a Climate of Impunity,”documents harms suffered by migrants, most from the Horn of Africa, who try to travel through Yemen on their way to Saudi Arabia for work. Human Rights Watch found that various Yemeni security agencies in the border town of Haradh, where dozens of camps exist, and at checkpoints, allow the human trafficking industry to flourish with little government interference.