Running the Gauntlet: Ethiopian Asylum Seekers in Yemen

Many of our people come to Yemen because of their political problems, and they suffer many more problems at the beach. Other refugees—the Somalis—they accept them and take them to the [Kharaz refugee] camp, but we are directly captured and deported to the country which we escaped from...if we try to come to UNHCR we are treated badly at every [police] checkpoint. Some, by going a long trip and hiding themselves along the way, arrive in Sana’a. But many are captured first.

—Ethiopian refugee living in Sana’a[80]

Arriving in Yemen: Two Coasts, Two Different Approaches

Ethiopians arriving in Yemen by sea face two substantially different situations depending on where they land. Those arriving along Yemen’s southeastern Arab Sea coast—usually on boats that have made the perilous crossing from Bosasso—are often able to reach two UNHCR-run reception centers—at Mayfa’a and Ahwar—that provide food, medical attention, and a place to rest. Those who reach the centers are usually not arrested there and are provided with appointment slips that are of some use in avoiding subsequent arrest after they move on.

Along Yemen’s western Red Sea coast—the point of arrival for most of the boats making the shorter crossing from Obock in Djibouti—the reception is significantly harsher. Ethiopian asylum seekers and migrants who arrive there must keep to the shadows, hiding from government security forces deployed to arrest and deport them back to Ethiopia.

Part of the reason for the distinction lies in the differing approaches of local authorities along the two coasts. UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies have successfully negotiated with local authorities on the Arab Sea coast to allow Ethiopians and other non-Somalis to make use of the reception centers. But they have met stiff resistance to requests for similar leniency from security officials along the Red Sea coast.[81] Some humanitarian officials speculate that this is partly linked to the importance of the Red Sea coast as a major smuggling route for goods as well as people. The security forces there are engaged in a broader effort to crack down on the flow of contraband into Yemen and beyond.[82]

At least part of the explanation for the different approaches on the two coasts is more straightforward—it reflects the Yemeni government’s overall policy of trying to prevent Ethiopian nationals from seeking asylum in Yemen or transiting onwards through Yemen to neighboring countries. Most of the Ethiopians who come to Yemen by sea arrive on the Red Sea coast, and roughly two-thirds of the total number of arrivals on that coast are Ethiopians.[83] If cracking down on Ethiopian asylum seekers and migrants is the goal, the Red Sea coast is the place to do it.

Arriving on the Red Sea Coast: Arrest and Refoulement

Since 2006 Yemeni military forces have been under orders to arrest Ethiopians they find after their arrival on the coast.[84] These orders are primarily enforced along the Red Sea coast. As one locally based humanitarian official put it to Human Rights Watch, “the order from the local military authorities [on the Red Sea coast] is that no Ethiopian is seen as a refugee.”[85]

Many Ethiopians, aware of the very real danger of arrest that awaits them on the Red Sea coast, make prior arrangements to be met at their landing point by smugglers who collect them from the beaches and immediately travel onwards towards the Saudi border. The crews of the boats that transport the passengers to Yemen often arrange to call the smugglers from mobile phones when the boats are still half an hour or more off the shore. This ensures that they are waiting when the boats arrive but do not arrive too soon and risk being detected by the security forces. These arrangements are carried out with such precision that Ethiopian arrivals are often in a vehicle driving towards their next destination within minutes of arriving in Yemen.[86]

Ethiopians who arrive on the Red Sea coast with no one to meet them have little choice but to start moving inland trying to remain undetected in hopes of finding safety before they are arrested. For example one Ethiopian man who arrived by boat near Bab-el-Mandeb in July 2009 told Human Rights Watch that he spent a night sleeping in the bush, stumbled upon a small town the next day, walked into a local telephone center, and handed the proprietor a scrap of paper with the phone number of a relative in Sana’a. The shop’s proprietor then agreed over the phone with the man’s relative to transport him to Sana’a in return for a fee.[87]

Humanitarian agencies widely believe that a large majority of the Ethiopians arriving on the Red Sea coast escape arrest in one way or another. Certainly the Yemeni government does not claim to have arrested anywhere near the total number of Ethiopians who land there. Even so, many are caught. Roads along the Red Sea coast are dotted with security checkpoints and the area is heavily patrolled by Yemeni military personnel.

When military personnel arrest Ethiopians along the Red Sea coast they detain them in local detention facilities and then transfer most of them onwards to a large prison in the city of Ta’iz, in southwestern Yemen.[88] If the security forces intercept a mixed group of Somalis and Ethiopians who have arrived together, they typically stop the group and divide them by nationality. The Somalis in the group are either let go or provided with transportation to the UNHCR-run transit point at Bab-el-Mandeb. The Ethiopians in the group are all arrested and put on a fast track towards deportation or refoulement.[89]

In some cases the security forces have trouble distinguishing between the Somalis and Ethiopians in a group of new arrivals. In such cases the security forces sometimes detain the entire group and call in local humanitarian organizations to help them do the job. One humanitarian official told Human Rights Watch of an incident in July 2009 where military personnel called officials from the Yemen Red Crescent (YRC) to a small detention center at Dubab—near the transit point for new arrivals at Bab-el-Mandeb—and asked them to separate the Ethiopians from the Somalis in a group of detainees. They obliged, and the military sent the 13 Somalis in the group to the reception center at Bab-el-Mandeb while keeping 42 Ethiopians who had arrived on the same boat in detention.[90]

Humanitarian agencies ask Ethiopian nationals who arrive at the Bab-el-Mandeb transit point on their own to leave; if they stay and are detected they face arrest. The Yemeni military monitors traffic at the Bab-el-Mandeb transit point.[91]Knowing this, the vast majority of Ethiopians who arrive in the area avoid the humanitarian agencies even if they are in need of assistance. As one humanitarian official told Human Rights Watch, “Ethiopians do not come to the reception center [at Bab-el-Mandeb] because if they do they will go to the prison.”[92]

Arriving on the Arab Sea Coast: A More Lenient Approach

Authorities on the Arab Sea coast take a less aggressive approach to newly arrived Ethiopians than their counterparts on the Red Sea coast. Generally, all new arrivals, regardless of nationality, are permitted access to the UNHCR-run reception centers at Mayfa’a and Ahwar along the Gulf of Aden coast.[93] This is literally a life-saving concession on the part of the local authorities as many new arrivals are badly in need of medical and other assistance after the arduous maritime crossing from Bosasso. There have been incidents where security forces have threatened to enter the reception centers and arrest the Ethiopians they find there but these incidents have been rare and have grown less frequent over time.[94]

Ethiopians who reach the reception centers at Ahwar and Mayfa’a and request to seek asylum in Yemen can obtain an “appointment slip” from UNHCR’s implementing partner agencies. The passes are meant to give them 10 days to reach the UNHCR office in either Aden or Sana’a to undergo Refugee Status Determination. This represents another hard-won concession that UNHCR and its partner agencies negotiated with the local authorities.[95] But as a mechanism of protection for non-Somali asylum seekers, it is inadequate.

The main problem with the 10-day appointment slips is that they are not officially recognized. They carry no stamp or other imprimatur of the Yemeni government. They bear only a UNHCR logo and indeed even UNHCR does not affix an official stamp, which might at least lend them some legitimacy to members of the security forces. They are little more than slips of paper that UNHCR uses to request, but cannot require, police and other authorities to allow their bearers to pass freely to Aden or Sana’a during a 10-day period. They are respected, or not, according to the whims of the police and other security officers encountered by asylum seekers along the roads. Other countries have adopted mechanisms that provide more robust protection from arrest and deportation to newly arrived asylum seekers.[96]

In many cases the 10-day appointment slips do prove adequate to allow Ethiopians to travel safely along the roads to Sana’a or Aden to reach a UNHCR office. In other cases they at least prompt police officials to phone UNHCR when they arrest a person who is in possession of one of the forms.[97] But in many other cases they are ignored by police officers who, not without merit, consider them to be unofficial documents that contravene their orders to arrest undocumented Ethiopians. As of the time of publication, UNHCR is negotiating with the Yemeni government to replace the 10-day appointment forms with official, government-stamped transit passes. UNHCR’s proposal envisions government officials stationed at the reception centers to issue and stamp these forms. But no agreement, let alone any commitment to a time frame, had been realized as of December 2009.[98]

Staff working at one of the two reception centers along the Gulf of Aden coast told Human Rights Watch that they had received at least a handful of Ethiopian new arrivals who refused to accept the 10-day appointment slips because they had previously been arrested in Yemen while attempting to travel with them and were then deported back to Ethiopia—only to begin the entire journey anew.[99] “They are very afraid,” one humanitarian worker who had spent time working at one of the reception centers said. “When they come back the second time they are asking us to help, not just to give them that appointment form.”[100]

Unprotected on the Roads: Extortion and Violent Crime

Ethiopians who arrive in Yemen seeking asylum must do more than simply avoid arrest on or near the beaches. As described, they must make their way to the UNHCR office in Sana’a or Aden without official documents. In addition to the very real possibility of arrest and deportation, these Ethiopian asylum seekers face dangers at the hands of people—security forces and local residents—who recognize that their unprotected status makes them easy targets for extortion and violent crime.

Extortion

Human Rights Watch documented numerous cases of extortion by the security forces—all of them targeting undocumented Ethiopians. It is difficult to ascertain how frequent these incidents are, but Ethiopian refugee community leaders in Yemen say that the problem is widespread.[101] In some cases security forces operating along the Red Sea coast have arrested Ethiopian new arrivals and then offered to sell them back their freedom. In other cases asylum seekers and migrants face demands for bribes at security checkpoints along the road. In both cases, failure to comply with the extortionate demands can mean arrest and deportation to Ethiopia.[102]

One ethnic Oromo Ethiopian who arrived on the Red Sea coast in April 2009 told Human Rights Watch that he and all of the other passengers on his boat were arrested by Yemeni military personnel shortly after reaching shore. The Somalis among them were then separated and sent away on a separate truck, presumably to the transit point at Bab-el-Mandeb. The remaining passengers, approximately 50 Ethiopians, were taken to what he described as a camp some distance from the nearest community. Security personnel demanded that they contact any relatives they had in Yemen and tell them to send money in order to secure their freedom. A few people, including one of the men interviewed by Human Rights Watch, managed to make these arrangements by phoning relatives in Sana’a and were released once the money changed hands. The rest were told that they would be taken to the prison in Ta’iz.[103]

Human Rights Watch interviewed a handful of other Ethiopians in Yemen who had similar experiences. One man said that he and a group of Ethiopians who had just arrived on the coast were arrested near the beach and “gathered in tents in the wilderness” by members of the security forces. “They ask if you have a relative in Saudi Arabia or Sana’a,” he said. “They tell you to call them [to ask them to send money]. They say that Ta’iz prison is very bad so you should pay to be released. They collected money from about 10 [of us] and the rest they collected and took to prison.”[104]

An Ethiopian refugee in Sana’a told Human Rights Watch that in June 2009 her 14-year-old daughter called another Ethiopian living near the city to say that she had been arrested near Dubab on the Red Sea coast and urgently needed “at least US$250” to avoid being taken to Ta’iz prison and deported to Ethiopia. She had not known that her daughter was coming to Yemen at all, and by the time she received the message she could not contact the original phone number. When Human Rights Watch interviewed the woman a month after these events she had still heard nothing further from her daughter.[105]

Human Rights Watch also documented several cases of Ethiopian asylum seekers who were forced to bribe police officers at roadside checkpoints even though they were traveling with appointment slips issued by the reception centers at Ahwar and Mayfa’a. For this reason many of the Ethiopians interviewed by Human Rights Watch derided the appointment forms as “useless” or at least inadequate. In the words of one Ethiopian Oromo refugee, “the police do not respect the forms, so the people are not safe from the police.”[106]

Violent Crime

In addition to the threats they face from the security forces, newly arrived Ethiopians find that they are easy targets for violent crime. Their inability to report crimes to the police without risking arrest themselves means that crimes can often be committed against them with impunity.

Generally, Yemeni communities along the coasts where new arrivals land have shown extraordinary generosity and compassion towards migrants and refugees. Local communities regularly report the arrival of new boats to humanitarian agencies so they can transport them to the reception centers. They often provide food, water, and other forms of assistance to people who arrive in urgent need of help after the horrors of the crossing. And it is often left to the same communities to bury the bodies of those who do not survive the journey and wash ashore.[107] Alongside all of this, however, there are also incidents of violent crime against the relatively defenseless new arrivals, carried out by either security force personnel or local residents.

Human Rights Watch interviewed two women who were raped by men who found them lost, one alone and the other with her children, near their respective points of arrival in 2008. One of the women was badly beaten and then gang raped by a group of Yemeni men who left her for dead beneath a tree. She was found later the same day by people from a nearby village who drove her all the way to Aden for medical attention. An official with a humanitarian agency that has provided assistance to victims of similar attacks told Human Rights Watch that they often happen because “people arrive on the coast and just start walking. This is very dangerous. They are not protected; they do not know the language.”[108]

Arrest and Refoulement of Ethiopian Asylum Seekers at Kharaz Refugee Camp

The only refugee camp in Yemen is located at Kharaz, near the coast in the southern Lahaj governorate. The camp, run by UNHCR, is home to a fluctuating number of refugees that rarely exceeds 12,000 people. Somali refugees come and go, and new arrivals come to the camp on an almost-daily basis. Once they have undergone registration procedures Somalis are allowed to travel as they please. Most choose not to stay; the camp is remote, the climate is harsh, and income-generating opportunities are few and far between.[109]

There are almost no Ethiopians among the steady flow of new arrivals to the camp and all of the roughly 700 Ethiopian residents have been living there for many years.[110] The reason for this is that UNHCR and its partner agencies refuse to transport Ethiopian nationals to Kharaz from the organizations’ transit point along the Red Sea coast because this would lead to their arrest and deportation. As the UNHCR country representative told Human Rights Watch, “We do not transport Ethiopians to the camp. The authorities would order us to bring them to a detention center.”[111]

Because of these policies and because the fate of Ethiopians who have arrived in Kharaz in the past is widely known, very few Ethiopian asylum seekers go to the camp. But some arrive in spite of all the obstacles, either unaware of what awaits them at Kharaz or simply not knowing where else to go. Some are transported to the camp by UNHCR or its partner agencies after they pretend to be Somali nationals. Others arrive on their own, securing private transport or making the arduous trek inland to the camp on foot.[112]

UNHCR’s country representative told Human Rights Watch that “if 10 Oromo [Ethiopians] arrived in Kharaz tomorrow, we would ask them not to stay.”[113] This is not entirely accurate, and the truth is more disturbing. UNHCR’s implementing partners who interview and register new arrivals to Kharaz are required to inform UNHCR whenever they discover an Ethiopian national among the people they interview. UNHCR staff then informs the police officers who are stationed in the camp. The police then arrest the Ethiopians—the first step towards eventual refoulement or deportation.

By entering the Kharaz refugee camp, Ethiopians are giving a strong indication that they are seeking protection. UNHCR has a responsibility to ensure that they are able to seek asylum, are not mistreated, and that those entitled to refugee status are not subjected to refoulement. Yet UNHCR practice is to turn them over to the police without adequate assurances that they will have an opportunity to have their refugee claims heard, that UNHCR will be able to visit them in detention, or that they will not be returned to Ethiopia.

UNHCR has made only ineffectual private protests against the government’s treatment of the Ethiopians. According to UNHCR, the agency has told the Yemeni government that there is a conflict between the government’s obligations under the Refugee Convention and its instructions to security authorities in Lahaj, but these protests have fallen on deaf ears and have not resulted in any positive change on the ground. This scenario has left UNHCR and implementing partner staff in the position of effectively having to cooperate with police actions that bring serious risk of refoulement for refugees the agency is mandated to protect.

Perhaps the most egregious of these incidents took place in October 2008. A group of 56 Ethiopians and one Somali were transported to Kharaz camp. They began registration procedures with UNHCR’s implementing partners, but when the police became aware of their presence they asked that UNHCR hand them over to police custody. The police accused UNHCR of “aiding terrorists” by taking in the new arrivals and insisted that they be detained inside of the compound until trucks could be brought to transport them to a detention facility. After UNHCR staff informed the group that they were to be arrested, several of them escaped from the compound overnight. The police captured some of these and then surrounded the compound.[114]

The UNHCR country representative later described the incident to Human Rights Watch as “tragic.”[115] The Ethiopians, who had come to Kharaz seeking shelter and protection, instead found themselves detained in the UNHCR compound overnight.[116] Only one of them—the Somali national—was ultimately released. The next day all the remaining asylum seekers from this group were taken away in large trucks. One refugee who witnessed the scene told Human Rights Watch that, “The police took them away in a big truck that looks like a prison.”[117]

UNHCR tried to obtain access to them in detention but in the end failed to locate any of the detained asylum seekers.[118] UNHCR officials told Human Rights Watch that they did not know what became of them. Roughly a week after the incident Yemen’s Al Jammuriya newspaper reported that 50 Ethiopians arrested from Kharaz camp had been deported back to Ethiopia through Aden.[119]

The October 2008 mass arrest was unusually dramatic, but it reflects the Yemeni government’s usual approach to Ethiopian asylum seekers with the misfortune to arrive at Kharaz. UNHCR informed Human Rights Watch in October 2009 that its current standard operating procedure is to inform the police of any Ethiopian arrival at the camp, and that since April 2009 Ethiopians are interviewed by UNHCR officials in the presence of the police, are not detained, and are issued with 10-day appointment slips to enable them to reach a UNHCR office if they wish to seek asylum.[120] However, UNHCR officials and other sources interviewed by Human Rights Watch in mid-2009 stated that Ethiopian nationals who arrived at the camp at that time were detained and that UNHCR access to them in detention was sporadic.[121]

In July 2009 a 19-year-old Ethiopian, whose name and details are on file with Human Rights Watch, arrived at the camp falsely claiming to be a Somali national. When the truth came out during his registration with an NGO official in the camp, UNHCR informed the head of the police in the camp who then arrested the young man.[122] UNHCR managed to visit him in detention only after he had been in custody for several weeks, and determined that he “did not have any protection needs,” according to correspondence on the case between Human Rights Watch and UNHCR.[123] According to UNHCR, 10 out of 16 Ethiopians who arrived at Kharaz camp since the beginning of 2009 were referred for Refugee Status Determination (RSD) without being detained, and that five of the remaining six were detained for only a few days and then released.[124]

In other cases police have reportedly arrested Ethiopians who arrive at the camp before they were able to present themselves to UNHCR. Ethiopian community leaders from the camp told Human Rights Watch that in June 2009 a group of roughly 20 Ethiopian Oromo asylum seekers arrived at the camp late at night and sought shelter with registered Ethiopian refugees living in the camp. They were arrested hours later. “We provided food for them,” said one refugee who witnessed their arrest. “They were sitting behind the mosque, but the police came during the night and arrested them. No one knows where they took them.”[125]

The failure of UNHCR’s limited efforts to push for change in the Yemeni government’s treatment of non-Somali asylum seekers at Kharaz and on the Red Sea coast is illustrated by one of its own initiatives. Unable to prevent the arrest and refoulement of Ethiopian asylum seekers, UNHCR has resorted to an awareness campaign that seeks to make Ethiopians and other non-Somali asylum seekers understand that they face arrest if they arrive on the Red Sea coast or at Kharaz camp.[126]

Refoulement of Asylum Seekers

There are no reliable statistics regarding the number of Ethiopians who are refouled or deported each year by the Yemeni government. UNHCR estimates that in 2008 there were roughly 500 individual cases of deportation or refoulement from Yemen to Ethiopia that they learned about.[127] The agency also estimates that there were “several hundred” such cases between the end of 2008 and October 2009. But the Yemeni government does not inform UNHCR of these cases, so the figure does not include the unknown number of cases that UNHCR did not discover on its own.[128] Nor is there any way of knowing how many of the people sent back to Ethiopia were in fact seeking asylum. As one senior UN official put it, “We do not even know how many people are coming, where they are being detained. We really have no information. Zero information. It is impossible to guess at the number of Ethiopians deported…They don’t allow any of us access to these people.”[129] The International Organization for Migration (IOM) receives frequent requests from the Yemeni government for financial assistance with returns to Ethiopia, all of which it has declined on the basis that there is no evidence the repatriations are voluntary.[130] UNHCR has reportedly been approached with similar requests.[131]

Another source of confusion is the uncertainty over the number of different locations from which Ethiopians are being deported and refouled. UNHCR believes—but cannot confirm— that all deportations to Ethiopia take place from the capital, Sana’a. This is partly because Ethiopian embassy officials say that they must visit every deportee at the immigration detention facility in Sana’a in order to verify their nationality.[132] But at the same time, several sources told Human Rights Watch that some Ethiopians are flown back to Ethiopia directly from Ta’iz, where Ethiopians captured along the Red Sea coast are often initially detained.[133] And Yemeni newspapers have reported the deportation of at least one group of Ethiopian asylum seekers from the international airport in Aden.[134]

Ethiopian Embassy Involvement in Refoulement

UNHCR has almost no access to the immigration detention facility in the capital, Sana’a, or to other detention facilities where people awaiting deportation are held. By contrast, Ethiopian embassy officials have unfettered access to all Ethiopian detainees in the Sana’a immigration detention facility. There is evidence that embassy officials have coerced asylum seekers into declaring themselves willing to return home.

Ethiopian embassy officials regularly visit Ethiopian detainees awaiting deportation in Sana’a. According to UN and humanitarian officials, they emerge from these interviews with forms, thumb-printed by the detainees and bearing their photographs, which indicate that they wish to return to Ethiopia. The Yemeni government has approached international humanitarian agencies in an effort to solicit financial assistance in repatriating detainees to Ethiopia, producing the forms as evidence that no one is being coerced into returning home.[135] But no one other than guards at the detention facility and Ethiopian government officials are present to monitor these interviews. On one of the rare occasions when UNHCR staff obtained access to the detention facility, guards quite suddenly asked them to leave, saying that this was because officials from the Ethiopian embassy were due to arrive for detainee interviews.[136] UNHCR officials in Yemen told Human Rights Watch that it was concerned about the practice of Ethiopian embassy officials interviewing Ethiopian nationals in detention prior to deportation “in view of the fact that systematic access [to UNHCR] is not granted to all non-Somalis to ascertain their protection needs.”[137]

During 2008 the Yemeni government did not refer to UNHCR even one case of an Ethiopian detainee at the Sana’a immigration detention facility who wished to claim asylum in Yemen.[138] In other words, the Yemeni government’s position is that every Ethiopian national who passes through the immigration detention facility agrees without being coerced to return home—a highly implausible claim under any circumstances.

All of this tends to lend additional credibility to the accounts of Ethiopian nationals in Yemen who allege that Ethiopian embassy officials coerce would-be asylum seekers into thumb-printing the voluntary repatriation forms.[139] Human Rights Watch interviewed one rejected asylum applicant whose appeal of that adverse decision was still pending at the time he was arrested by police in early 2009. He was taken to the immigration detention facility in Sana’a and placed in a large cell with some 80 other Ethiopian detainees. He described to Human Rights Watch what he saw during the 15 days he spent in detention there:

There were people from Ta’iz [prison]. Most of them said they were arrested on the road or on the beach. After four days the Ethiopian government came and obliged people to take photographs. They are then forced to fingerprint a paper with their photograph. The paper comes from the embassy. It allows these people to go to Ethiopia. It says this person wants to return to Ethiopia. Then they took away to Ethiopia all the people whose file had already been prepared. Together they would fill one big bus. I overheard some of their interviews. They asked them, “Why did you come here [to Yemen]?” Some of the people said they had problems but they did not want to explain their problem because they were afraid. They just said, “We cannot return to Ethiopia.”[140]

The former detainee said that a handful of the people interviewed by the Ethiopian officials refused to thumbprint the forms or submit to having their photograph taken and that they were roughed up by the prison guards to coerce them into doing so.[141]