“They Fired on Us Like Rain” : Saudi Arabian Mass Killings of Ethiopian Migrants at the Yemen-Saudi Border

By Nadia Hardman, et al.

Saudi border guards have killed at least hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who tried to cross the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023, and the killings continue to this day. Saudi border guards have used explosive weapons indiscriminately and shot people at close range, including women and children, in a pattern that is widespread and systematic. “They Fired on Us Like Rain” is based on 42 interviews with Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who tried to cross into Saudi Arabia from Yemen, or the friends or relatives of deceased migrants. It is corroborated by an open-source investigation that has analyzed over 350 videos and photographs taken by witnesses as well as dozens of satellite images. This report shows how the pattern of abuses has changed from an apparent practice of occasional shootings and mass detentions to widespread and systematic killings. Widespread and systematic killings are crimes against humanity if they are part of a state policy of deliberate murder of a civilian population. Human Rights Watch calls on the Saudi government to immediately and urgently revoke any policy, whether explicit or de facto, targeting migrants with weapons and close-range attacks on civilian migrants on the border with Yemen. The Saudi government should investigate and appropriately discipline or prosecute security personnel responsible for unlawfully firing explosive weapons, or shooting at close range, at migrants at the Yemen border.  

New York: Human Rights Watch, 2023. 82p.