Ethiopia has repatriated over 100,000 citizens from Saudi Arabia, Addis Ababa’s foreign ministry said, following a violent crackdown against illegal immigrants in the oil-rich kingdom. <\/p>\n
Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom said that up to 50,000 more citizens are still expected to come home.<\/p>\n
“Last night arrivals from Saudi reached 100,620,” Tedros said in a statement, adding that “all citizens that were detained in Riyadh deportation camps are back”.<\/p>\n
Ethiopia started repatriating its citizens from Saudi Arabia last month after a seven-month amnesty period for undocumented immigrants expired, sparking violent protests between Ethiopian migrants and Saudi police.<\/p>\n
Repatriation efforts have been “successful so far”, the foreign ministry said.<\/p>\n
“The number is increasing over time,” foreign ministry spokesman Dina Mufti told AFP.<\/p>\n
The Ethiopian government said three of its citizens were killed in the clashes with Saudi police.<\/p>\n
Human Rights Watch has urged Saudi authorities to launch a probe into the violence, and warned of a potential “humanitarian disaster” for workers held in custody.<\/p>\n
Dina said the repatriation operation, which started on November 13, could take a couple more weeks to complete.<\/p>\n
“Hopefully we will do it as soon as possible… if the current pace continues, it may be it will be in a week or two,” he said.<\/p>\n
Large numbers of Ethiopians leave the country every year looking for work abroad, often in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Many face poor working conditions, mental and physical abuse, low pay and discrimination, according to the International Labour Organisation.<\/p>\n
In October, Ethiopia said it was banning nationals from moving to the Middle East for work after reports of maltreatment. <\/p>\n
With 91 million citizens, Ethiopia is Africa’s second most populous nation and also one of the continent’s poorest; the majority of people live on less than two dollars a day.<\/p>\n
Though it is one of the fastest growing economies on the continent, unemployment persists. Around 27 percent of women and 13 percent of men are jobless, according to the ILO.<\/p>\n
Migrants from other nations are also returning home from Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
Last week, official media in Sudan said more than 11,000 workers had returned voluntarily after the amnesty ended.<\/p>\n
It is to be remembered that Ethiopians living <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ethiopia has repatriated over 100,000 citizens from Saudi Arabia, Addis Ababa’s foreign ministry said, following a violent crackdown against illegal immigrants in the oil-rich kingdom. Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom said that up to 50,000 more citizens are still expected…<\/span> Read more ›<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6034"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}