Imperialism murders in cold blood poor people that tries to cross the Saudi Arabian border
Past 21st August a report of a so-called human right organization (Human Rights Watch, Yankee) was published in which it was denounced that the border guards of Saudi Arabia shall have killed hundreds, even thousands, of Ethiopian immigrants and asylum seekers. The Ethiopian migrants have tried to cross the Saudi border from Yemen between March 2022 and June 2023. These systematic and generalized attacks were done withing a vast weapon arsenal – including explosives and short-range weapons – to stop the immigrants to cross the border. There are children among the killed. Although hundreds of pictures and videos were reported, the Saudi Arabian government keeps denying conducting the massacre.
According to the report, those migrants try to cross the border paying large amounts of money to Houthi forces, that have seen the opportunity to do business as a consequence of the hunger and war of the semi-colonial countries like Ethiopia. During these journeys, the smugglers that work shoulder to shoulder with the Houthies, abuse the migrants physically, kidnapping them for several days so they accept to pay more money. Additionally, women and children were raped. During the long journey there are refugee-camps, as Al Raqw, where 50,000 people live in camping tents. As they know that crossing the border is deadly, several decide to wait to cross or they were “pushed back” over months by the police. This create overcrowding and there is a lack of work, so “the only
way you can survive is if you have money in your pocket” an immigrant states.
During months the Saudi border police tries to push them back, but the immigrants decided to embark their journey. This is when a vast weapon arsenal is used against them: From explosives that are used all over the entry routes to short-range weapons to follow the survivors. The ones that managed to survive told how from big groups of more than hundred people only a handful of them survived. The attacks can last for hours in which the border police shoots at them continuously. There are other extraordinary disgusting abuses of the Saudi border forces mentioned.
Later, if the migrants are not murdered at the border, a vast majority of them are imprisoned in detention centers, where they are abused until they can “pay the exit fee”, as the so-called NGO reported. Those who are killed end up buried in graveyard areas near the border so the massacre remains silence.
Both the forced immigration as a result of the conditions of the oppressed country, as well as the massacres, are results of imperialism. It is the imperialist countries who plunder and oppress the people of the countries under their rule, mainly in Latin America, Asia and Africa. There they create deplorable conditions for the people, but this allows them to increase their profits. Hunger, extreme poverty, gangs and even wars. All of this obligates hundred of thousands of people yearly to cross borders seeking for an opportunity to “improve their situation” in imperialist countries. However, those cannot allow that essential labor force from the oppressed countries moves on its own will and not regarding to their needs. That is why the massacres in the borders are not a thing of a single country, but generalized in all those countries where they need a certain equilibrium between some foreign workers to oppress in their imperialist countries in semi-slave conditions (be it in factories, in the countryside, etc.) and a migratory control. But, to whitewash their hands, they do not allow that these massacres occur in their countries, so they hide their crimes and pay third countries to do it.
As stated, Saudi Arabia is not the only country that has applied these policies at its borders. In July we reported that the Greek Coast Guard, at the service of the imperialist countries of the EU, murdered 600 immigrants by intentionally sinking the ship on which they were traveling. The Coast Guard tried to hide the crime forcing the survivors to lie, but finally the policies of the Coast Guard came to light, where they also tried first to “push back” the migrants so that their deaths would occur in non-Greek waters. The same tactic that the Saudi border police uses, trying to make immigrants die of hunger, cold or disease on the border. However, when they fail to make them go back it is when lethal measures were applied.
In the same way as in the Spanish State, where a little over a year ago the Melilla Massacre was known, with more than 100 dead and with images of the Spanish border police shooting “preventative” – according to the Spanish justice – at immigrants who tried to cross the barbed wired fence. Previously, migrants had to cross hundreds of kilometers until they reached Morocco, since they came from different parts of Africa, facing thirst, hunger and suffering extreme temperatures of heat and cold. However, the most used route remains the maritime, where more than 11,000 people have died in four years. The revolutionary newspaper Servir al Pueblo wrote: “Humanitarian aid organizations encrypt more than 11,000 people who have died trying to reach the Spanish coasts in just four years, from 2018 to 2022. Logically, the State reduces it to more than half in their official figures.
However, the press of all these countries do not hesitate to categorize this as something unthinkable in their countries, even if they follow the same methods. In addition, the so-called NGO had already taken another report in 2020 pointing to the same practices but was not reported so much in the international press. This is no coincidence, since the bourgeois press is dominated to the interests of the sole hegemonic superpower, today the USA. Following their political interests, Saudi Arabia is an objective because of its improvement of relationship with China since 2022. In that year, treaties between China and Saudi Arabia (being one of the biggest producers of crude oil worldwide) on export of the Arab country’s oil. They also established military cooperation and on other important political aspects.
This report of the so-called NGO also follows the interests of US. Since their “recommendations” obviously have the intention to pressure Saudi Arabia in order to avoid the political advance of China in Saudi Arabia: “Suspend any transfers of arms and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia, including arms, training, and maintenance agreements with Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Interior” or the intervention of the United Nations, an organism that is, according to the imperialists hierarchy, dominated mainly by the Yankees.
