The Journey to Yemen

If there are 100 boats, maybe the people from only two or three will say there was no problem. Every boat has stories more difficult than the last one. You will meet one person and think, this is terrible. Then you meet the next boat and you will hear something you cannot even imagine. You feel heartache.

—Humanitarian worker at a reception center for arrivals on the southern coast of Yemen.[21]

Nearly every day, boats overcrowded with scores of Ethiopian and Somali migrants and asylum seekers arrive at remote points along the shores of Yemen.[22] Many of the people who make this journey suffer horribly along the way. More than a thousand have died during the crossing since the beginning of 2008, including at least 300 people during the first nine months of 2009.[23] Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which provides medical and humanitarian assistance to new arrivals along Yemen’s Arab Sea coast, published a report in 2008 describing the plight of migrants and refugees who undertake the voyage as a “tragedy” that had been “largely ignored by the international community and Western media.”[24] It is a tragedy that has since continued unabated and similarly ignored.

Human Smuggling Routes to Yemen from Puntland and Djibouti

There are two primary routes used to smuggle people into Yemen by sea. The first begins on beaches around the port city of Bosasso in Somalia’s semi-autonomous region of Puntland.[25] Boats plying this route cross the Gulf of Aden to transport their passengers to points along Yemen’s Arab Sea coast. The second route originates around Obock, on the coast of Djibouti, and ends along Yemen’s western, Red Sea coast.[26]

The route from Djibouti is normally the faster and safer of the two; the crossing is less than 100 miles and generally takes no more than seven or eight hours.[27] By contrast the route from Bosasso across the Gulf of Aden typically takes between one and three days depending on the type of boat, conditions at sea, and whether the vessels suffer engine failure or other mishaps along the way.[28] The crews plying the Djibouti route also generally treat their passengers better than the notoriously brutal smugglers operating out of Bosasso, and they often keep their boats in better condition.[29] Most of the worst abuses described below are endured by passengers embarking from Bosasso.

The Djibouti route is also more expensive, however. Passage on the boats from Obock typically costs roughly US$100 to $150 per person, and for many people travel to Djibouti is itself more expensive than travel to Bosasso.[30] The cheapest boats from Bosasso charge only $50 to $80 per person.[31] These are large, slow boats that are extremely unsafe, overcrowded, and often without a spare outboard motor. Faster, smaller, and better equipped boats cost considerably more—in some cases upwards of $100 or $150 per person—but travel more quickly and safely to their destination. As one humanitarian worker based at a reception center for arrivals from Bosasso put it, “If you don’t have $150 you will have to take the chance on the weaker boats—maybe you will survive, maybe you will not.”[32]

Reaching the Boats

The following pages focus on the hazards and abuses passengers encounter aboard the boats. But for many people, reaching the point of departure for their journey is itself an enterprise fraught with danger. Overland journeys to Bosasso from south and central Somalia can mean traversing stretches of road controlled by abusive militias or plagued by bandits. Incidents of armed robbery, often leading to murder, rape, and other abuses, occur with frequency in some areas.[33] Gangs and militias also rob many people while they wait, often for several days at a time, for transport from around Obock or Bosasso. Human Rights Watch interviewed several people who were robbed while waiting near the beaches for days for their boat to leave.[34] And in late 2009 there were reports that Puntland security forces had begun cracking down, preventing people from reaching some of the beaches normally used as points of embarkation.[35]

Violence and Death Aboard the Boats

Overcrowding and Brutality Towards Passengers

Smugglers from Bosasso regularly crowd as many as 150 people onto boats that could safely carry no more than 70 or 80; some boats carry as many as 250 passengers.[36] Passengers sit wedged against each other, crammed in so tightly that there is often quite literally no room to move. Many crews use the small cargo holds below deck as storage space for a few additional passengers, who are forced to lie motionless alongside one another for long hours or even days at a time without light, room to move, or enough air to breathe. The holds are often dark, wet, and suffocating, with stale air that is tainted by oil, rotten fish, or other commodities that are sometimes stored below.[37]

Many passengers are alarmed by these conditions but feel that they have no choice but to acquiesce to them—especially if they have already paid. One man who crossed from Bosasso to Yemen in May 2009 told Human Rights Watch that, “When I paid the money they said we will take 30 people, but when I came to the place I saw more than 60 so I was surprised. I said there are a lot of people and I cannot go. But I could not get my money back, so I had to.”[38]

Many of the rickety boats are so overcrowded that once at sea they risk capsizing if their passengers move about too suddenly. To allay that danger, most smugglers order their passengers to remain motionless throughout the entire trip. As the journey stretches onwards this becomes a practical impossibility as passengers desperately seek to stretch cramped limbs, stand up, or otherwise relieve the pain brought on by so many long hours of immobility. The smugglers cannot prevent this kind of movement altogether but they attempt to minimize it by beating anyone who moves. In some cases they tie up passengers who continue moving in spite of the beatings—often people who are already overwhelmed and agitated by the treatment they are suffering.[39] On at least a few occasions, bodies of Somalis and Ethiopians with their hands and feet tied together have washed up on Yemeni beaches.[40]

Human Rights Watch interviewed several dozen people who made the crossing from either Bosasso or Djibouti and all of them said that either they or other passengers on their boats were beaten by crew members using sticks, rubber whips, belts, or the smugglers’ bare fists and feet. One young Somali man who traveled to Yemen from Bosasso with his mother told Human Rights Watch: “They beat people throughout the journey. They beat my mother once because she stood up. I could not speak because I was afraid for myself to be dropped into the sea. They beat her on her back badly. They were beating her for several minutes. She was shouting.”[41] The 2008 MSF report found that beatings were reported on nine out of 10 boats that made the crossing from Bosasso.[42]

One Somali man told Human Rights Watch that even his efforts to save another passenger’s life were only rewarded with more abuse:

Whenever someone moved, the smugglers came and beat him. I tried to stretch and stand up and they beat me. He was holding a whip made out of a tire, walking on the people and beating everybody who moves.

There was a girl behind me. They beat her and then she fell into the sea. Me and one other boy got her back into the boat. It was in the middle of the ocean—we jumped off the boat and got her back into it. When we got her back the smugglers put her in a very small place near the motor where she could not even move her legs. They were beating her because she kept moving.

When I sat down again a smuggler came and slapped me. I fell and he kicked me in the back and put me below the deck. He was insulting me. He said, “If you move again I will drop you into the sea.” Below was a very cold place. You can’t move, even your finger. There were three other people down there.[43]

In many cases smugglers threaten to throw passengers into the sea because they keep moving, talk too much, or become emotionally distraught.[44] In some cases crew members have even threatened to drown disruptive children if their parents do not find a way to silence them. One woman who made the crossing in February 2009 said that her boat was adrift at sea for nearly 24 hours after the only working motor broke down. When her baby boy started crying incessantly, the smugglers snatched him from her arms:

My child was crying and one of the smugglers said I should stop him from crying or he would drop the child into the sea. I said, “You would not do that” and he said, “I will show you!” And he grabbed him by the shoulders and dipped him three times into the sea. He was one year and two months [old]. He was completely under water. His eyes got red because of the salt water. I tried to get back the child but one of them beat me with a stick on my back. When he beat me I fell onto the [other passengers].

Other passengers threatened to capsize the boat if they did not give the woman her child back; the smugglers began beating the others with sticks as well but ultimately relented and returned the child to his mother. “The child had drunk a lot of salt water,” she recalled, “and we were trying to bring that water out.”[45]

Murder and Suicide Onboard the Boats

Passengers have been murdered by smugglers on board the boats. And in at least a handful of cases passengers have committed suicide by jumping into the sea, apparently because they could no longer endure the cramped conditions or the mistreatment suffered during the crossing.[46]

One young man described to Human Rights Watch how his aunt, a woman in her early thirties, was raped and murdered by the crew of their ship:

They threw my aunt into the sea. They raped her first. She said to them, “When I reach Yemen I will tell the government and the UN,” and she was shouting and abusing them. That’s when they threw her into the sea. At that time I tried to shout but some of the crew came and beat me on the head many times. The other passengers said if you talk they will kill you. So I became quiet. I had only this aunt in my life and at that time I decided to die. I tried to throw myself into the sea but the other passengers caught me. Now I am alone.[47]

Another woman told Human Rights Watch that the motor broke down on the overcrowded boat she took from Bosasso in early 2009, leaving them adrift for nearly three days. An Ethiopian Oromo passenger on the boat “was going mad and talking and moving. He saw the boat was not moving and that there was no water and no food…he made too much movement and they threw him into the sea.”[48]

Rape and Sexual Assault

In addition to the brutal discipline enforced aboard the boats, some crews subject passengers to other forms of violent abuse including rape, sexual assault, and robbery. Rape is a relatively rare occurrence, in part because most boats are simply too small or crowded to allow for it to take place. It does happen, however—humanitarian organizations have documented several cases.[49]

Human Rights Watch interviewed three women who were raped on board the boats. Two of the victims were members of a minority clan in Somalia and believed this partly explained why they were targeted.[50] One was raped aboard a relatively large boat that had a small pilot house towards the rear, where the rape occurred. “The other passengers were afraid—they could not even look at the man while he was raping me,” she said. “They said they would beat anyone who lifted his head, that everyone should look down.”[51]

One young Somali man was forced to sit and watch while two smugglers raped his 13-year-old sister:

When we were on the sea she was sitting near the driver. They wanted to rape the girl. When I heard her scream I stood up but they beat me with a stick on my neck. They played with her. They raped her. They did what they wanted. And when they raped my sister they kicked her. I saw her, she was crying. But no one talked. If a person talked they would kick him or throw him to the sea.[52]

Much more common than rape are acts of sexual harassment carried out by crew members. Human Rights Watch interviewed several male and female passengers who saw crew members grope and sexually harass women on the boats.[53] In some cases smugglers keep women on board the boats after the other passengers disembark, at which point they are at serious risk of sexual violence.[54]

Targeting Ethiopian Passengers for Abuse

While the crossing from Bosasso to Yemen can entail terrible suffering and abuse for any passenger, smugglers often single out Ethiopians (generally not including ethnic Somali Ethiopians) for especially violent and degrading treatment. Ethiopian passengers are often more likely to be forced into the cramped and dangerous holds below deck and to be beaten more brutally and more frequently than the Somali passengers.[55] One worker with a humanitarian agency that assists new arrivals told Human Rights Watch that, “The smugglers don’t like the Ethiopians. They treat them badly. They are always beating them very, very hard and sometimes tie their hands.”[56]

The smugglers who operate the boats from Bosasso are for the most part Somali nationals. Former passengers and humanitarian workers told Human Rights Watch that they think the harsh treatment of Ethiopian passengers is partly explained by longstanding animosities between Somalia and Ethiopia—animosities that have run especially deep ever since Ethiopia’s military intervention in Somalia in late 2006. It may also partly reflect the simple fact that smugglers know that with non-Somalis they enjoy an even greater degree of impunity than they do when committing abuses against their countrymen. One Somali refugee who made the crossing from Bosasso, asked by Human Rights Watch why he thought the Ethiopian passengers on his boat were treated more harshly than the others, simply shrugged and replied, “They are not Somali. They are Ethiopian.”[57]

Death in Sight of Shore

The most dangerous part of the crossing is often the moment of arrival. Many smugglers, afraid of risking possible capture by Yemeni security forces if they land on the beaches, force their passengers to disembark several hundred meters from the shore in deep water.[58] But many do not know how to swim or are too exhausted from their ordeal to make it. Hundreds of people have drowned within sight of Yemen’s shores after being forced overboard, or passengers panic and cause the boats to capsize after refusing to jump.[59] These deaths are commonplace.[60] Making matters worse, smugglers often force their passengers to disembark at night in order to further reduce their own chances of being arrested, adding to the confusion and panic that ensues.

Human Rights Watch interviewed more than a dozen people who saw fellow passengers—and in some cases family members—drown in this way. One Somali man, who had sold his family’s home in Afgoye to pay for their journey to Yemen, lost his three-year-old daughter in February 2009:

As the boat came close to Yemen they started beating the people to get them off the boats. [The smuggler] had said everyone should go, but the people did not go because they are afraid. They caught my little girl and dropped her into the sea. She was three-years-old. I fought with the man and he hit me with a stick and I lost some of my teeth. After that they started pushing all of us into the sea. They dropped all of my children into the sea—five of them. The three-year-old girl died. She drowned. One almost died because she swallowed a lot of water but I rescued her and took her to the hospital in Mayfa’a where she stayed for 20 days. She is six-years-old.[61]

Many other passengers have seen their journeys end with similar horrors. One man who arrived from Bosasso on a boat with roughly 175 other people recalled that, “When we came to shore they said, ‘You must jump.’ Seven people drowned. Five washed up on the beach, and two are missing.”[62] Another man was stabbed in the shoulder by a member of the crew and then pushed into the water after he refused to jump out of the boat. He managed to swim to shore in spite of his wound.[63]

Arriving in Yemen

The brutality and stress of the crossing leaves many passengers physically harmed or emotionally traumatized by the time they reach shore. MSF’s 2008 study found that many passengers suffered from conditions that include body pains from sitting cramped and immobile for long periods of time, wounds inflicted by smugglers aboard the boats, and severe emotional trauma.[64] For most of the Somali passengers, at least the worst is over when they arrive hungry and exhausted on Yemen’s shores. But for many of the thousands of Ethiopian nationals among them, much of their ordeal still lies before them.