The United States was told last year that Saudi security forces were shooting, shelling and abusing groups of migrants, but it chose not to raise the issue publicly.


Last fall, American diplomats received grim news that border guards in Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. partner in the Middle East, were using lethal force against African migrants who were trying to enter the kingdom from Yemen.

The diplomats got more detail in December, when United Nations officials presented them with information about Saudi security forces shooting, shelling and abusing migrants, leaving many dead and wounded, according to U.S. officials and a person who attended the meetings, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to speak to journalists.

In the months since, American officials have not publicly criticized the Saudis’ conduct, although State Department officials said this past week, following a published report of the killings, that U.S. diplomats have raised the issue with their Saudi counterparts and asked them to investigate. It remains unclear whether those discussions have affected Saudi actions.

The Saudi security forces’ violence along the border came to the fore in a report by Human Rights Watch on Monday that accused them of shooting and firing explosive projectiles at Ethiopian migrants, killing hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of them during the 15-month period that ended in June.

The report was based on interviews with migrants and their associates, photos and videos and satellite photos of the border area. It cited migrants who said Saudi guards had asked them which limb they preferred before shooting them in the arm or leg and a 17-year-old boy who said guards had forced him and another migrant to rape two girls as the guards looked on.

The report said that if killing migrants were official Saudi policy, it could be a crime against humanity.

In January, Richard Mills, the deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations, made an oblique reference to the issue, saying at a Security Council briefing on Yemen that “we remain concerned by alleged abuses against migrants on the border with Saudi Arabia.”

“We urge all parties to allow U.N. investigators to access both sides of the border to thoroughly investigate these allegations,” Mr. Mills added, without mentioning that U.S., European and U.N. officials had recently learned that many Africans had been killed by Saudi Arabia’s border forces.

In a statement sent to The New York Times on Saturday night, after this article was initially published, the State Department said the United States learned about specific accusations after the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights publicly released letters it had sent on the issue to Saudi Arabia and to Houthi officials in Yemen in late 2022. (A response rebutting the accusations sent by Saudi diplomats in March indicates at least one U.N. letter was sent on October 3. The public release was 60 days later, the State Department said.)

“The United States quickly engaged senior Saudi officials to express our concern,” the department said, adding that U.S. officials “have continued to regularly raise our concerns with Saudi contacts,” including at the Security Council briefing in January.

The new details about the Saudi border killings come as President Biden seeks to overcome past tensions and cinch a diplomatic breakthrough between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Late last year, around the time when U.S. diplomats were learning about the border violence, Mr. Biden accused Saudi Arabia of acting against U.S. interests over other issues. Saudi leaders had cut oil production, potentially leading to a rise in global oil prices before the midterm elections. Biden administration officials thought they had reached a secret agreement for the Saudis to increase production. Mr. Biden vowed to impose “consequences” on Saudi Arabia.

Further straining relations, Saudi Arabia had declined to join Western sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. And Riyadh’s decision to decrease oil production seemed to support Russia’s economy, which relies on oil and gas exports.

Continued in comments

  • originalucifer
    link
    fedilink
    07 months ago

    they killed 2k people in new york and we didnt do squat. how is this a surprise?