Ethiopians Continue to Suffer in Middle East: Five Die in Saudi Prison | NewBusinessEthiopia


Five Ethiopians died in a crowded Saudi Arabia prison, which they call it ‘centre for deporting illegal immigrants’, the Arab News reported this week. Ethiopian Women Migrants Destinations by Country in 2009 The five died in the deportation centre in the southern Red Sea port of Jizan of "asphyxiation due to overcrowding," the newspaper stated quoting a local police official. “The disease-breeding situation in the center persists,” the Supervisor General of the National Society for Human Rights in Jazan, Ahmad Al-Bahkali, told Arab News. “I was totally shocked by the hundreds of people there with no sanitation facilities, and I was equally shocked by the callousness on the part of the employees there,” wrote Khaled Almaeena, Arab News Editor-in Chief, describing the worst situation of Saudi deportation center when he visited to check on his driver who was held at the deportation center at the Old Jeddah airport. “It was total anarchy. How could this happen in a country that proclaims to be following the Qur’an and the Sunnah?,” he questions. “I believe it is a crime. The explanation of acting Jazan police spokesman Abdul Rahman Al-Zahrani that they died of asphyxiation due to overcrowding should give us cause for even more concern.” “I am in agony that in this holy month of Ramadan five people whose only crime was that they were illegal migrants would meet such a horrible fate. What is even more agonizing is that these are being justified as “death by natural causes” due to overcrowding, Khaled wrote. Reports show that every month thousands of Ethiopians legally and illegally migrate to Saudi Arabia and Middle East Countries. It has now become common for Ethiopian families to receive dead bodies of their families and relatives at Bole International Airport from these countries. Monthly Ethiopian women migration to the Middle East A research done by Bina Fernandez of the University of Leeds in September 2009, entitled, “Ethiopian domestic workers in the Middle-East’ shows that from 2004 – 2006 a total of 70,781 Ethiopians migrated to Middle East. Out of this 68,090 were females. They pay brokers between 100 to 750 USD dollars, according to the study, while they are only supposed to pay for their passports and medical check up. The return ticket, insurance and visa to be covered by the employer. In 1989, there was a doubling of the figures of migrants to the ME, from 1,742 to over 3,000 in 1990 and 1991; with a slightly higher percentage of male migrants. This tapered off in the rest of the nineties, with roughly stable and equal numbers of men and women. The total rose again dramatically in 2003, with 5,510 migrants leaving the country; this time, 72% of them were women, a percentage that has today increased to over 96% of official or documented migration.