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Raids free enslaved migrants/refugees in Yemen

Injured migrants treated by IOM and its partners waiting for their return to Ethiopia at the IOM Departure Centre in Haradh. Since November 2010, 5,880 migrants have been directly provided with health care, including 240 women and 1192 children IOM
    DUBAI

    The army in Yemen has started a crackdown on illegal smuggling hideouts in the north where migrants, refugees and asylum seekers from the Horn of Africa are frequently held against their will and tortured by criminal gangs looking for ransom money.

    In the last four weeks, 1,620 migrants, including women and children, have been freed in army raids around the northern town of Haradh close to the border with Saudi Arabia, according to information from the International medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). It says most of the released migrants it treated at the MSF-run Al-Mazraq hospital had been victims of human trafficking, forced labour and slavery.

    “There are clear signs of extreme violence. Fingernails have been pulled out and many are badly beaten. We welcome this clampdown, but there are almost certainly thousands more migrants in captivity, and for those released, welcome centres and humanitarian NGOs are seriously overstretched,” Tarek Daher, MSF’s head of mission in Yemen, told IRIN.

    Migrants recently told IRIN horrific stories of the kidnapping and torture they had experienced after landing in Yemen. Around a 107,000 crossed from the Horn of Africa into Yemen in 2012, most originally from Ethiopia, according to UNHCR, and at least 30,000 have made the journey so far this year.

    See previous IRIN reporting on migration in Yemen here: 

    Migrant voices - Ethiopians in Yemen describe kidnapping and torture 

    DJIBOUTI-ETHIOPIA: Irregular migration continues unabated 

    ETHIOPIA-YEMEN: Jemmal Ahmed, “I survived a deadly trip to Yemen" 

    YEMEN: Tortured for ransom

    jj/cb

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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