From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   U.S. Knew Saudis Were Killing African Migrants   
   By Ben Hubbard and Edward Wong, Aug. 26, 2023, NY Times   
   Last fall, American diplomats received grim news that border guards in Saudi   
   Arabia, a close U.S. partner in the Middle East, were using lethal force   
   against African migrants who were trying to enter the kingdom from Yemen.   
      
   The diplomats got more detail in December, when United Nations officials   
   presented them with information about Saudi security forces shooting, shelling   
   and abusing migrants, leaving many dead and wounded, according to U.S.   
   officials and a person who    
   attended the meetings, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity since they   
   were not authorized to speak to journalists.   
      
   In the months since, American officials have not publicly criticized the   
   Saudis’ conduct, although State Dept officials said this past week,   
   following a published report of the killings, that U.S. diplomats have raised   
   the issue with their Saudi    
   counterparts and asked them to investigate. It remains unclear whether those   
   discussions have affected Saudi actions.   
      
   The Saudi security forces’ violence along the border came to the fore in a   
   report by Human Rights Watch on Monday that accused them of shooting and   
   firing explosive projectiles at Ethiopian migrants, killing hundreds, and   
   perhaps thousands, of them    
   during the 15-month period that ended in June.   
      
   The report was based on interviews with migrants and their associates, photos   
   and videos and satellite photos of the border area. It cited migrants who said   
   Saudi guards had asked them which limb they preferred before shooting them in   
   the arm or leg and    
   a 17-year-old boy who said guards had forced him and another migrant to rape   
   two girls as the guards looked on.   
      
   The report said that if killing migrants were official Saudi policy, it could   
   be a crime against humanity.   
      
   In January, Richard Mills, the deputy U.S. rep to the U.N., made an oblique   
   reference to the issue, saying at a Security Council briefing on Yemen that   
   “we remain concerned by alleged abuses against migrants on the border with   
   Saudi Arabia.”   
      
   “We urge all parties to allow U.N. investigators to access both sides of the   
   border to thoroughly investigate these allegations,” Mr. Mills added,   
   without mentioning that U.S., European and U.N. officials had recently learned   
   that many Africans had    
   been killed by Saudi Arabia’s border forces.   
      
   In a statement sent to The New York Times on Saturday night, after this   
   article was initially published, the State Department said the United States   
   learned about specific accusations after the U.N. High Commissioner for Human   
   Rights publicly released    
   letters it had sent on the issue to Saudi Arabia and to Houthi officials in   
   Yemen in late 2022. (A response rebutting the accusations sent by Saudi   
   diplomats in March indicates at least one U.N. letter was sent on October 3.   
   The public release was 60    
   days later, the State Dept said.)   
      
   “The U.S.A. quickly engaged senior Saudi officials to express our   
   concern,” the department said, adding that U.S. officials “have continued   
   to regularly raise our concerns with Saudi contacts,” including at the   
   Security Council briefing in    
   January.   
      
   The new details about the Saudi border killings come as Biden seeks to   
   overcome past tensions and cinch a diplomatic breakthrough between Saudi   
   Arabia and Israel.   
      
   Late last year, around the time when U.S. diplomats were learning about the   
   border violence, Mr. Biden accused Saudi Arabia of acting against U.S.   
   interests over other issues. Saudi leaders had cut oil production, potentially   
   leading to a rise in global    
   oil prices before the midterm elections. Biden administration officials   
   thought they had reached a secret agreement for the Saudis to increase   
   production. Biden vowed to impose “consequences” on Saudi Arabia.   
      
   Further straining relations, Saudi Arabia had declined to join Western   
   sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. And Riyadh’s decision to   
   decrease oil production seemed to support Russia’s economy, which relies on   
   oil and gas exports.   
      
   But in recent months, Biden and his aides have been talking to Saudi officials   
   about their country establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, which would   
   be a major geopolitical coup. In those discussions, the Saudis have asked the   
   U.S. for security    
   guarantees, more lethal weapons and help with a nuclear energy program. Biden   
   might speak with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of   
   Saudi Arabia, on the sidelines of a leadership summit of the Group of 20   
   nations next month in New    
   Delhi, India.   
      
   Some members of Congress, mostly Democrats, have strongly criticized Saudi   
   Arabia for its human rights record, including its yearslong war in Yemen.   
   Those lawmakers will almost certainly raise further doubts about selling more   
   arms to Saudi Arabia or    
   working with it on a civilian nuclear program, which some U.S. officials fear   
   could be cover for a nuclear weapons program.   
      
   Among those briefed on the killing last December by U.N. officials was Steven   
   H. Fagin, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, according to a person who was present.   
   Around that time, the United Nations also shared information with others at   
   the State Department    
   and with diplomats from France, Germany, Holland, Sweden and the E.U., this   
   person said.   
      
   Inside Yemen, the border killings are anything but secret. Some attacks are   
   reported on Yemeni TV, and many of those wounded end up in Yemeni hospitals.   
      
   “We face these cases daily coming from the border areas: dead and seriously   
   wounded, women, old people and children,” Mujahid al-Anisi, the head of the   
   emergency unit at al-Jumhori Hospital, a Yemeni facility near the main   
   crossing zone, told the The    
   New York Times by phone on Wednesday.   
      
   The hospital receives an average of four or five cases a day, he said. Many   
   are found by the road unconscious and driven 12 hours to the hospital with   
   wounds in their heads, chests and abdomens that require urgent surgeries. Some   
   need amputations. About    
   one in 10 are women.   
      
   “These people arrive so worried and badly wounded,” he said.   
      
   Aid workers and United Nations officials have been tracking the violence since   
   early last year, but international efforts to investigate the matter have been   
   few, and public efforts to make it stop even fewer.   
      
      
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