In Saudi Arabia, hundreds of Ethiopians locked in appalling Covid centers
The British newspaper reveals, with supporting images, the concentration camp hell in which hundreds of Ethiopians are crammed in Saudi Arabia.
Screenshot from UK newspaper "The Telegraph".
Text by: Léonard Vincent Follow
3 min
An investigation published Sunday, August 30 by the British newspaper The Telegraph raised an outcry, from European chancelleries to the UN.
Two journalists from the daily revealed, with images and videos, that hundreds of Ethiopians are being held in at least two detention centers in Saudi Arabia.
Centers supposedly intended to curb the spread of Covid-19 and where the conditions for survival are literally appalling.
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“
The guards throw the corpses as if they were garbage cans.
So says one of the Ethiopian detainees who was secretly contacted by the Ethiopian journalist Zecharias Zelalem and the Briton Will Brown
for the daily
The Telegraph
.
All the prisoners interviewed describe a concentration camp hell: the promiscuity of hundreds of men in terrible heat, lashes at the rate of racist screams, little water, little food.
The images filmed by cellphones and sent to the
Telegraph
are gruesome: overflowing latrines, blocked windows, desperate calls from chested and barefoot men wading through a sewer.
And even a suicide teenager hanging from a window.
Geolocation data indicates that at least two centers are in the south and west of the country, near Jazan and Mecca.
Ethiopian migrants were reportedly locked there in April, after roundups purportedly intended to reduce the factors in the spread of Covid-19.
As soon as the investigation was published, international reactions were immediate.
Solicited, the International Organization of Migration (IOM), the General Secretariat of the United Nations, the British diplomacy and the American organization Human Rights Watch expressed their “
concern
” and asked for an investigation.
The very next day, Saudi Arabia promised to shed light on these “
shocking and unacceptable
”
images
.
In a statement sent to the newspaper, the Saudi government says it is "
examining the state of all government centers in the light of these allegations
", adding that if some "
failed to meet their needs
", the issue would be resolved.
But Riyadh immediately pointed the finger at the Ethiopian government which, during negotiations, would have "
refused their return
" to the country, for lack of means to quarantine them.
When questioned by the
Telegraph
, Ethiopia, for its part, said it was ignorant of these detention camps.
Ethiopia's Minister of Economic Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, Tsion Teklu, said she knew no more than what the
Telegraph
revealed
and would raise the issue with Saudi Arabia.
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