Riyadh, Thousands of African migrants are being exploited every year by human trafficking gangs who convince them of a better life and better jobs in Saudi Arabia.

Smuggling Africans into Saudi Arabia through Yemen has become a profitable business for such gangs who kidnap those migrants upon their arrival and ask their families for ransom for their release.

An official source at the Ethiopian Embassy in Yemen said that human traffickers of different nationalities are involved in smuggling Ethiopians from the Horn of Africa to Saudi Arabia through Yemen.

“These gangs deceive Ethiopians into believing they would be reaching Saudi shores, when they, in fact, reach the Yemeni coast, where they are kidnapped by other gangs.” The source said that these gangs could be comprised of Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalis or Yemenis.

Migrants reach Saudi Arabia through Yemen’s Hardh area on the borders of the Saudi Jazan region.

He said that Ethiopian “economic refugees” are taken from Djibouti’s shores, which lack security control, and are told that they are heading for the Saudi borders.

He said that the number of Ethiopian refugees in Yemen remains unknown.

The official said his government has been exerting efforts to control human smuggling and tackle refugee-related problems in adjacent countries by repatriating many back home and issuing immediate passports to migrants who have lost their documents.

Such an initiative is taking place in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration and the Yemeni government.

“The number of refugees in Yemen and Saudi Arabia has declined following the formation of the Higher Committee to Combat Smuggling under the presidency of the deputy prime minister and with the membership of civil organizations and officials from the country’s nine administrative regions.”

The committee has been economically supporting those who return to Ethiopia by granting them land plots and sums of money to start their own small enterprises. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that there are 46,000 migrants coming from Africa to Gulf states during the first half of 2013.

Last year, Yemen received 107,500 refugees who came to stay in Yemen or to look for work in GCC countries. The UNHCR said that the number of immigrants and refugees in Yemen has reached half a million since 2006.

It estimated that 38,827 Ethiopian refugees are arriving in Yemen this year, accounting for 84 percent of refugees, in addition to 7,559 Somalis.

Of them, 34,875 crossed the Red Sea to Yemen’s Lahj governorate and 11,542 crossed the Arabian Sea to Hadhramaut.

Most of the boats are overcrowded and prone to capsizing. Smugglers sometimes force passengers to jump when they are spotted by border patrols.

A Doctors Without Borders Organization report showed that there are 200 “torture camps” in the Hardh area alone.

Source: ArabNews