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| 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.
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(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.
