Saudi enjoys ‘impunity’ over torture and abuse of migrant workers - HRW

Saudi's culture of 'impunity' has increased to alarming levels, despite human rights groups consistently exposing Saudi atrocities against migrant workers in the country’s badly-conditioned detention centres. 

Recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) research found that hundreds of detainees have been held under awful inhumane conditions in a deportation centre in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. The report indicated that torture and abuse have been common practices, which even allegedly led to three deaths there. 

“There is the issue of impunity and a lack of accountability to the extent this continues. No one is allowed access to facilities. They [Saudis] think they can get away with it because there are no tracks on the detention centers. There is not adequate pressure at the moment," Nadia Hardman, a leading researcher of the Human Rights Watch, tells TRT World. 

According to different estimates, there are nearly 10 million foreign workers, who are working across the country in different sectors from energy to services. From time to time, Riyadh has carried out a series of detentions, deporting hundreds of thousands of migrants. 

Hardman has interviewed nine detainees after they returned to their home countries from Saudi Arabia. Two of them are Indians and seven of them are Ethiopians. All of them described various types of mistreatment and human rights violations in the Riyadh centre. 

Some detainees have stayed under detention for more than a year and others have been for months. Many migrants have also feared becoming infected with Covid-19 due to being held in crowded rooms, where they lie on top of each other. 

“We as human rights organisations are trying to expose what’s happening. But it needs an international community. It needs those governments that are also in relationship with Saudi Arabia but who also have nationals in the detention center. They need to demand the release of their civilians,” Hardman says. 

Saudi “impunity”

Apparently, neither the international community nor those governments, whose citizens have been detained in the Saudi detention centre featuring in the HRW report, are up to develop enough pressure to force the oil-rich kingdom, one of the wealthiest states, to abide by international law and standards on the treatment of migrants.

In September, the UN passed a resolution against Saudi Arabia on its mistreatment of refugees and migrants. There was, however, no effect. It suggests there was barely even a minor change in the cruel conduct of Saudis, Hardman and her colleagues observed. 

“There seems to be no incentive for Saudi Arabia to change its behaviour. There is no consequence when there should be,” Hardman views. 

“Of course many countries have trade relationships with Saudi Arabia and what happens in detention centers might not be priority. But this is migration detention. There is no punitive reason for people to be there. They have not committed a crime. If they have, they should be brought to a court to answer those crimes,” Hardman says. 

“Having them in a deportation center for more than a year is just unimaginable,” she adds. 

International law bans any prolonged detention, which is not sanctioned by courts, seeing it as arbitrary arrest. 

The Indian government has shown some efforts to repatriate some of its citizens held in the deportation centre, according to Hardman. The Ethiopian government, which is now waging a war with its northern province, the Tigray region, has also tried in very slow motion to bring some of its citizens back home, she says. 

No hope!

“I spoke with some people, who said they expected to die there because they have seen other detainees abused so badly that they were unlawfully killed,” Hardman says. 

While their treatment is appalling, there is no sign that their brutal captors could be held accountable for what they have done to migrants’ lives, Hardman says. 

“The detainees feel that they don’t have hope. They don’t have expectations. Of course they asked me what would happen. But they don’t have expectations. The only thing they asked for is the world to know what is happening,” she says. 

The HRW could not estimate the exact number of detainees in the Riyadh centre. 

Saudi authorities have not replied to any requests from the HRW on both the number of detained migrants in the deportation centre, and migrant accounts of various mistreatment. 

While Saudis have shown indiscriminate abuse against all detainees, they have still kept different nationalities in different rooms according to migrant accounts. 

“You have the sub-Saharan African room. You have the South Asian area. We do not know exact nationalities. But we do know that people are being kept in separate areas,” says Hardman. 

Hardman has also previously investigated the detained conditions of mostly Ethiopian migrants, who have been stuck in the war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthis. They have been held in various Saudi detention centres across the country after being forcibly expelled by Yemen’s Houthis to the kingdom’s territory.