A blow against the traffickers: 535 Ethiopian hostages set free

On Tuesday, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) in Göttingen reported that the authorities in Yemen managed a major blow against international trafficking. During the weekend, they arrested 50 suspected traffickers and freed 535 Ethiopians. The criminals had not only received payment for taking the Ethiopian refugees across the Gulf of Aden – they also held them hostage after the arrival in Yemen to extort ransom money from their families.

"The disbanding of the gang of traffickers is a sign of hope for the tens of thousands of Ethiopian refugees in Yemen," said Ulrich Delius, the STP's Africa-expert. "As illegal immigrants, they are defenseless and at the mercy of the smugglers." Many refugee women are raped by the traffickers. After their perilous voyage across the Gulf of Aden, the refugees are often held hostage and tortured until their relatives pay a ransom sum. Many hostages are severely traumatized after being set free. In 2012, the STP had called for stronger action against traffickers before. Last Sunday, the Yemeni Minister of Human Rights, Horiya Mashhour, asked the members of parliament to pass laws to ensure a better protection of the refugees and a more effective prosecution of the traffickers.

17,700 boat people arrived at Yemen's shores in January and February of 2013 alone. About 15,000 came from Ethiopia, 2,500 from Somalia. In 2012, about 107,000 Africans managed to escape to Yemen. More than 80,000 of them came from Ethiopia. Some are on the run from political persecution, others from poverty and a lack of economic prospects. Quite a few refugees have a university degree and try to settle in Saudi Arabia or the Gulf States, because there is no work for them in Ethiopia.

In Yemen, the refugees suffer not only from being without any rights – there is also a widespread climate of racism. They are often beaten, robbed or insulted. Migrants are often blamed for the increase of crime and for the impoverishment of the local population. Conservative Yemenis accuse them of encouraging the liberalization of society and thus endangering the "traditional order" in the country.

Neighboring Saudi Arabia is now trying to keep away migrants from Africa by securing the border to Yemen with a 1,800 km long fence. Officially, these measures are meant to stop the smuggling of drugs and arms and also to keep off radical Islamists. Because of the fence, the migrants hardly have a chance to escape from Yemen to the richer Arab states.