The timing could not have been worse for Rishi Sunak. Just days after it was confirmed by Downing Street that the Prime Minister would host Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in the autumn, a human rights organisation published an extensive report accusing Saudi Arabia of the ‘mass killing’ of migrants at its border with Yemen.
The 73-page report was released by Human Rights Watch (HRW), and its contents have been relayed by several media outlets, including the BBC and the Guardian. It is a harrowing read.
HRW allege that Saudi border guards killed ‘hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers’ as they attempted to cross the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023. ‘If committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants,’ continued the report, ‘these killings… would be a crime against humanity.’
The report was compiled after interviewing 42 people, including 38 Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers, and scrutinising hundreds of videos and photographs. Members
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