Saudi deporting Agames back to Ethiopia
Posted: 11 Feb 2022, 03:07
In January 2021, the Ethiopian government announced it would cooperate in the repatriation of 40,000 of its nationals detained in Saudi Arabia, beginning with a 1,000 a week. Forty percent of the returnees from Saudi Arabia between November 2020 and June 2021 were Tigrayan.
Deportations increased significantly between late June and mid-July, with over 30,000 reportedly deported. The surge in repatriations coincided with an increase in profiling, arbitrary detentions, and forcible disappearances of Tigrayans by Ethiopian authorities in Addis Ababa following the withdrawal of Ethiopian federal forces from the Tigray region and an expansion of the Tigray conflict.
Deportees said that conditions became progressively more restrictive and abusive. In the Semera center in mid-September, a new Afar security force, wearing gray and black uniforms, arrived and beat deportees, purportedly because detainees spent too much time in the toilets. “Two days ago, they [Afar special police] came and beat many of us,” said a 23-year-old deportee. “I am injured, and my leg and head are swollen. They beat us severely. They said, ‘You belong to the TPLF [Tigray People’s Liberation Front].’”
