Human Rights Watch released a new report on how Saudi forces have been killing Ethiopian migrants by the hundreds and possibly even the thousands over the last year and a half:
Saudi border guards have killed at least hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who tried to cross the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. If committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants, these killings, which appear to continue, would be a crime against humanity.
The report is the latest reminder of how brutal and abusive the Saudi government is. It is no secret that the government in Riyadh is despotic and cruel, but even by the standards of oppressive authoritarian governments the wanton mass slaughter of refugees stands out as truly appalling. It should be a wake-up call for the Biden administration. For months, Biden has been pursuing the terrible idea of a deal with Saudi Arabia that would involve a US security guarantee for the kingdom, and this report shows the world what kind of government the US would be pledging to defend and how they use the weapons that they receive from the United States. All negotiations with Saudi Arabia for increased US support and protection must cease.
The Saudi government has spent the last five years in damage control and whitewashing mode in an effort to make the world forget about its atrocities in Yemen and its murder and torture of dissidents, but the story of the slaughter of the migrants on the border cuts through all of that propaganda. No matter how much money the Saudi government throws at professional sports leagues to improve the kingdom’s public image, the sordid and bloody reality of a repressive state ruled by a war criminal cannot be concealed for long.
Read the rest of the article at Eunomia
Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
With SA, Iran and UAE now BRICS’ members, it seems that the era of US gun-boat diplomacy in southwest Asia has now ended..
What was expected to be the Century of China is quickly turning into a multi-polar Global Century, with the power shifting to the 85% not affiliated with the toxic Western brand..
Why should we care who SA should choose to ally with, we ought to just walk away from them completely and let them sink or swim on their own. their entire culture is basically inimical to western liberal values in the first place, and the regime everything our founders fought to see that we would not become, a theocratic monarchy. The USA shouldn’t keep pussyfooting around about it, allowing killers like MBS to spread their wickedness freely with nary even a slap on the hand… when sanctions were duly needed.