The New York Times - USA (2020-06-28)

8 0 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2020

Tracking an OutbreakGlobal Fallout

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Yem-
eni militiamen rumbled up to the
settlement of Al Ghar in the morn-
ing, firing their machine guns at
the Ethiopian migrants caught in
the middle of somebody else’s war.
They shouted at the migrants:
Take your coronavirus and leave
the country, or face death.
Fatima Mohammed’s baby,
Naa’if, was screaming. She
grabbed him and ran behind her
husband as bullets streaked over-
head.
“The sound of the bullets was
like thunder that wouldn’t stop,”
said Kedir Jenni, 30, an Ethiopian
waiter who also fled Al Ghar, near
the Saudi border in northern Yem-
en, on that morning in early April.
“Men and women get shot next to
you, you see them die and move
on.”
This scene and others were re-
counted in phone interviews with
a half dozen migrants now in
Saudi prisons. Their accounts
could not be independently veri-
fied, but human rights groups
have corroborated similar
episodes.
The Houthis, the Iran-backed
militia that controls most of north-
ern Yemen, have driven thou-
sands of migrants out of their ter-
ritory at gunpoint over the past
three months, blaming them for
spreading the coronavirus, and
dumped them in the desert with-
out food or water.
Others were forced to the bor-
der with Saudi Arabia, the
Houthis’ primary foe, only to be
shot at by Saudi border guards
and detained in prisons where
they were beaten, given little food
and forced to sleep on the same
floor that they use as a toilet, mi-
grants said in interviews from
prison. Some have returned to
abusive smugglers, determined to
cross the border to find jobs in oil-
rich Saudi Arabia.
A Houthi spokesman would not
immediately comment on the alle-
gations.
Five years of war between the
Houthis and the Saudi-led coali-
tion propping up Yemen’s govern-
ment have ransacked the country,
the poorest in the Middle East,
starving and killing its people and
smashing the door open to a
mounting coronavirus outbreak.
Not only Yemeni civilians are
caught in the crossfire. Humani-
tarian officials and researchers
say the African migrant workers
who traverse Yemen every year
endure torture, rape, extortion,
bombs and bullets in their desper-
ation to get to Saudi Arabia. This
spring, when the pandemic made
them convenient scapegoats for
Yemen’s troubles, they lost even
that slender hope.
“Covid is just one tragedy inside
so many other tragedies that
these migrants are facing,” said
Afrah Nasser, a Yemen researcher
at Human Rights Watch.
More than 100,000 Ethiopians,
Somalis and other East Africans
board overstuffed smugglers’

boats across the Red Sea or the

Gulf of Aden to Yemen every year,

according to the United Nations,

hoping to make their way north to

support their families with jobs as

domestic servants, animal herd-

ers or laborers in the wealthy Gulf

countries whose economies de-

pend on migrants.

The journey is murderous at ev-

ery stage. At sea, smugglers with-

hold water and food and throw un-

cooperative passengers over-

board; in Yemen, the migrants are

at the mercy of traffickers who

torture and sexually abuse them,

demanding huge sums of money

from their impoverished families

to buy their freedom, according to

the United Nations, Human

Rights Watch and other groups, as

well as interviews with migrants.

United Nations surveys show

that most migrants do not know

about the fighting in Yemen be-

fore they arrive, but crossfire and

coalition airstrikes find them any-

way. At border crossings, Saudi

guards shoot and kill them, litter-

ing what the migrants call

“slaughter valleys” with bodies,

migrants and humanitarian offi-

cials say. Those who survive are

often detained by Saudi authori-

ties and deported.

A Saudi official, who asked not

to be named, said allegations of

mistreatment of migrants who

cross the border illegally are not

true and would be an affront to

Saudi values.

Since borders clamped shut

during the pandemic, the flow of

migrants to Yemen has nearly

evaporated, plummeting from

18,904 in May 2019 to 1,195 this

May, according to the United Na-

tions. But at least 14,500 remain in

the country. Many arrived in

years past and stayed to scrape to-

gether a living or save up before

trying to go on to Saudi Arabia.

Ms. Mohammed, 23, said she

left Kemise, Ethiopia, after a di-

vorce two years ago, hoping to

earn enough as a maid in Saudi

Arabia to support her widowed

mother and two children back

home. The smuggler who brought

her to Yemen beat her repeatedly,

threatening to kill her unless her

family sent money.

When she could not pay, Ms.

Mohammed said, she was sold to

another smuggler who put her to

work at a shisha house in Al Ghar,

where the owner forced her to

have sex with her customers.

Al Ghar was where she met her

current husband. They made a liv-

ing selling food to other migrants

from under a plastic tent. She was

making breakfast there when the

Houthis arrived.

Mr. Jenni, who was working at a

hotel in Al Ghar, was the only one

of a group of friends from his Ethi-

opian hometown, Harage, to have

made it that far. He and about 270

others had crammed into a small

boat from the Somali coast, forbid-

den to move, eat or drink for the

two-day journey to Yemen. When

two friends asked for water, he

said, smugglers stabbed them and

threw them overboard.

As he watched them drown, Mr.

Jenni said, “I cried silently, be-

cause I knew my fate would be the

same if they heard me.”

When the Houthis stormed into

town in April, Mr. Jenni said he

fled in his flip-flops, shoving

$1,300 — all his savings — into his

underwear.

Some of the migrants who ran

from Al Ghar toward Saudi Arabia

on April 8 estimated that the

Houthis shot and killed at least

250 migrants that day. Another

migrant, Ali Mohammed, 28, who

recounted being chased off a farm

in nearby Al Haydan, said only 57

of the 200 Ethiopians with him

survived.

Authorities on both sides of the

war have long found it easy to stig-

matize African migrants as carri-

ers of disease — first cholera, now

coronavirus, which is consuming

what remains of Yemen’s health

care system. Though rumors of

sick residents had been circulat-

ing for some time, the first person

the Houthis confirmed had died

from coronavirus in Yemen, in

early May, was a Somali man.

“This kind of stigmatization on

migrants is life-threatening,” said

Mohammed Abdiker, the East and

Horn of Africa director for the In-

ternational Organization for Mi-

gration. Some migrants had been

harassed for trying to get water or

food, he added, and others blocked

from getting medical care.

All spring, the Houthis have

done little to curb the coronavirus,

denying reports of mass deaths in

their territory. Instead, humani-

tarian officials, local security offi-

cials and residents say, the

Houthis have used it as an excuse

to expel unwanted migrants,

mostly Ethiopians, driving them

toward the Saudi border or round-

ing up truckloads of people to

dump outside Houthi land.

The I.O.M. estimates the north-

ern authorities have arrested and

relocated 1,500 migrants to south-

ern Yemen over the past two

months. Thousands are marooned

in the southern port city of Aden,

where, according to the organiza-

tion, about 4,000 are living on the

street, struggling to get food or

water.

In April, according to local offi-

cials in Houthi territory, at least

390 were deported to Al Jawf, a

governorate on the war’s front

lines; from mid-April to mid-May,

at least 486 were expelled south to

the city of Taiz, where Houthi land

meets that of Yemen’s Saudi-

backed government.

Left to fend for themselves,

some migrants go hungry in the

open, unable to count on help from

Yemenis, who now avoid Africans

for fear of catching coronavirus.

They meet just as harsh a fate at

the Saudi border.

At one point in April, humani-

tarian officials estimate, the

Houthis left more than 20,000 mi-

grants — mostly Ethiopians,

many of them women — stranded

in the “slaughter valleys” along

the border. About 7,000 are be-

lieved to be there now. There is lit-

tle food, water or aid. The number

of dead is unknown.

Ms. Mohammed, Mr. Jenni and

the other Ethiopians reached the

Saudi border after three hours’

running, only to be shot at by

Saudi guards, they said. Ms. Mo-

hammed took cover under a large

rock until the Houthis retreated

the next morning, while Mr. Jenni

hid in a wooded area.

Saudi Arabia has deported

about 300,000 Ethiopians in the

last two years for being in the

kingdom illegally, according to hu-

manitarian officials. The deporta-

tions have continued during the

pandemic, though the Ethiopian

government has pushed back,

protesting that it cannot handle

thousands of returnees.

But for the migrants, going

home means giving up.

“I promised my six younger

brothers and sisters I would go to

Saudi Arabia to find a job and send

them to school,” said Mr. Jenni.

“But it only turned out to be a wild

dream.”

Ethiopian migrants who were forced by security officials to quarantine in the Yemeni capital of Sana in April over fears that they could spread the coronavirus.

MOHAMMED HAMOUD/GETTY IMAGES

YEMEN’S MIGRANT CRISIS

Blamed for Covid, and Made to Feel Unwelcome by Bullets

SUDD

EGYPTEG

ERITTREAT

ETHIOPIA

YEMEN

SAUDI ARABIA

Gulf of Aden

Red

Sea

Kemise

Addis Ababa

Aden

Taiz

AL JAWF

GOVERNORATEATEATEEE

50 00 MILES

Migrant

gathering area

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Left, migrants resting in an un-

finished building in Aden. Five

years of war between the

Houthis and a Saudi-led coali-

tion have devastated Yemen.

Houthi-allied Yemenis guarding a checkpoint in Sana during a pandemic-related curfew in May.

YAHYA ARHAB/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK

REUTERS

A militia has driven

thousands from its

territory at gunpoint.

By VIVIAN YEE

and TIKSA NEGERI

Vivian Yee reported from Beirut,
Lebanon, and Tiksa Negeri from
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Shuaib Al-
mosawa contributed reporting
from Sana, Yemen.

THE SPREAD

Infections Far Exceed

Official Rate, C.D.C. Says

The number of coronavirus infec-

tions in many parts of the United

States is more than 10 times

higher than the reported rate,

according to data released on

Friday by the Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention.

The analysis is part of a wide-

ranging set of surveys started by

the C.D.C. to estimate how widely

the virus has spread. Similar

studies are continuing all over the

world.

The C.D.C. study found, for

instance, that in South Florida,

just under 2 percent of the popula-

tion had been exposed to the virus

as of April 10, but the proportion

is likely to be higher now given

the surge of infections in the state.

The prevalence was highest in

New York City at nearly 7 percent

as of April 1.

The numbers indicate that even

in areas hit hard by the virus, an

overwhelming majority of people

have not yet been infected, said

Scott Hensley, a viral immunolo-

gist at the University of Pennsyl-

vania who was not involved in the

research.

“Many of us are sitting ducks

who are still susceptible to second

waves,” he said.

The results confirm what some

scientists have warned about for

months: That without wide test-

ing, scores of infected people go

undetected and spread the virus.

IMMIGRATION

U.S. Ordered to Release

Detained Migrant Children

Citing the severity of the pan-

demic, a federal judge in Los

Angeles on Friday ordered the

release of migrant children held in

the country’s three family deten-

tion centers.

The order, which mandates

their release by July 17, came after

plaintiffs in a long-running case

reported that some of the children

had tested positive for the coro-

navirus. It applies to children who

have been held for more than 20

days in detention centers run by

Immigration and Customs En-

forcement, including two in Texas

and one in Pennsylvania.

There were 124 children living

in those facilities on June 8, ac-

cording to the ruling.

“The family residential centers

are on fire, and there is no more

time for half measures,” Judge

Dolly M. Gee of the U.S. District

Court for the Central District of

California wrote in the order.

She also criticized the Trump

administration for its spotty com-

pliance with recommendations

from the Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention in the

centers.

It was the first time a court had

set a firm deadline for the release

of minors in family detention if

their parents chose a relative in

the United States to take custody.

Over all, about 2,500 immi-

grants in ICE detention have

tested positive for the virus. The

agency has said that it has re-

leased at least 900 people with

underlying conditions and that it

has shrunk the population in each

facility to mitigate the spread of

the virus.

NATIVE AMERICANS

Tribe Sues U.S. to Keep

Its Checkpoints for Virus

The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe,

fearful of what could happen if the

coronavirus spread across its

tribal lands in South Dakota, took

emergency steps 12 weeks ago

and set up checkpoints along

roads into its reservation to ques-

tion travelers about their health.

Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican,

objected, saying the checkpoints

amounted to an unlawful infringe-

ment on state and federal power.

The tribe would not back down,

crediting the checkpoints with

keeping cases to half a dozen. But

when the White House tried to

broker a solution, tribal officials

interpreted it as an implicit threat

to their coronavirus relief aid.

Now the standoff is moving to

the courts. On Tuesday, the tribe

filed suit in Federal District Court

in Washington asking a judge to

prevent officials from closing the

checkpoints and withdrawing

funding from the tribe.

It is the latest effort by tribal

governments to draw attention to

the problems in their relationship

with the federal government,

including underfunded assistance

programs and longstanding issues

with the Indian Health Service.

Around the U.S.

And the World