Were Australian weapons used in mass killings by Saudi Arabia?
A report by Human Rights Watch on the mass killing of hundreds, possibly thousands, of defenceless migrants and asylum seekers on the Saudi-Yemen border raises disturbing questions.
Joint report with Suzanne James (Green Left)
Yemen has been mired in a nine-year civil war between the Saudis and the Houthis which has left the country’s socioeconomic systems teetering on the edge of total collapse. Some 9.8 million children require humanitarian assistance, says Unicef.
The dominant reason for the war given in media reports is that Yemen risks becoming a satellite of Saudi Arabia’s rival, Iran. However, the conflict in Yemen is more complex.
The country is also important globally because of its proximity to the Gulf of Aden, a busy global shipping lane that carries an estimated US$1 trillion in goods annually.
Yemen has also been in the news recently because the Houthi government has launched drones and missiles against ships supplying Israel with weapons. The United States and Britain, with Australian government support, have conducted retaliatory attacks on Yemen.
Given these multi-layered conflicts, Yemen has proved to be an arms traders’ paradise, with the multitrillion-dollar global arms industry the biggest gunrunners of all. Australian arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) form a small part of this mix.
Australia’s Defence Department has approved 131 export permits to Saudi Arabia and 257 to the UAE in the 8½ years to January 29, according to Freedom of Information figures obtained by the author. No export applications for the UAE were denied in that period, while the five denied for Saudi Arabia were back in 2019–20 and 2020–21.
The ethics of Australian companies supplying arms to Saudi Arabia is again in the spotlight after Human Rights Watch (HRW) uncovered evidence that at least hundreds, possibly thousands, of unarmed migrants and asylum-seekers have been killed at the Yemen-Saudi border, allegedly by Saudi officers.
Human Rights Watch demands investigation
Most migrants and asylum seekers using the ‘Yemeni Route’ to get into Saudi Arabia are Ethiopians, fleeing serious human rights abuses. It is a dangerous journey, with organised crime gangs trafficking girls, drugs and human organs, and people smugglers.
HRW reported last August that Saudi border guards had killed ‘at least hundreds’ of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers trying to cross the Yemen-Saudi border in the 15 months between March 2022 and June 2023.
The report, They fired on us like rain: Saudi Arabian Mass Killings of Ethiopian Migrants at the Yemen-Saudi Border, describes torture, murder and armed violence against unarmed civilians using a variety of weapons. ‘Saudi officials are killing hundreds of women and children out of view of the rest of the world while they spend billions on sports-washing to try to improve their image.’
It adds: ‘If committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants, these killings, which appear to continue, would be a crime against humanity.’
The report notes an escalation in migrant and asylum seeker killings: ‘While Human Rights Watch has documented killings…at the border with Yemen and Saudi Arabia since 2014, [these] killings appear to be a deliberate escalation in both the number and manner of targeted killings.’
Survivors interviewed by HRW described 28 incidents in which groups of migrants were attacked by mortar projectiles and other explosive weapons. One survivor recounted that some people could not be identified ‘because their bodies are thrown everywhere’, while other people ‘were torn in half’.
HRW said ‘concerned countries should press for accountability and the UN should investigate’.
Australia has good reason for concern.
Have Australian weapons been used?
The report contains satellite images of a Saudi border guard post with what HRW says may be a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle parked nearby. The vehicle was seen in satellite imagery from 10 October 2021 to 31 December 2022.
The report notes the vehicle ‘appeared to have a heavy machine gun mounted in a turret on its roof’. This description matches military equipment that Australia sold to Saudi Arabia a couple of years earlier.
In early 2019, Saudi Arabia awarded Australian weapons manufacturer Electro Optic Systems (EOS) a contract to supply it with 500 remote weapons systems.
At that time, EOS was selling itself as ‘the largest global provider of remote weapons systems’.
The Saudi kingdom, known for its human rights abuses, ordered twice as many of the EOS weapons systems as the Australian Defence Force bought.
The high tech EOS system enables a user sitting inside the vehicle to operate a roof-mounted heavy machine gun, grenade or missile launcher, small cannon or combination of these. The company says its remote weapons systems significantly increase precision and ‘lethality’.
Watch the weapon system in action.
EOS started exporting its weapons systems to Saudi Arabia in mid-2019. According to Dr Ben Greene, then chief executive of EOS, the equipment was being supplied for US programs to support the Saudi Ministry of Interior for its border operations (emphasis added).
The timing of the EOS exports coincided with the Saudi Ministry of Interior's 2019 deployment of a new security force, the al-Afwaj Regiment, to support Saudi border guards.
Eleonora Ardemagni, an associate research fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies and an expert on Yemen, the Gulf monarchies and Arab military forces, wrote about the creation of the al-Afwaj Regiment.
In a 2020 report she describes the militarisation of the Saudi-Yemeni borderland:
This regiment is tasked with preventing smuggling, trafficking and infiltrators. Two years prior, a Green Berets team of the US Special Forces arrived in Saudi Arabia to train Saudi ground troops responsible for securing the border.
The delivery of 500 EOS weapons systems into this location at this time raises serious questions about whether any of this Australian-made equipment has been used in the atrocities documented by Human Rights Watch.
The Department of Defence did not respond to questions. Dr Andreas Schwer, chief executive of EOS, also failed to respond.
A spokesperson from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said:
The Australian Government is concerned by the reports of violence against Ethiopian migrants crossing the Saudi-Yemen border in a HRW report released in August 2023.
Australian officials raised this report directly with the Saudi Government and with the Saudi Human Rights Commission, emphasising Australia’s commitment to international humanitarian law.
Human Rights Watch has called for a UN investigation into the Yemen-Saudi borderland atrocities.
As concerns grow about Australia’s weapons exports, an urgent and transparent investigation would be appropriate, with results reported to parliament.
This is an edited version of an article first published at Green Left on 19.4.24. Co-author Suzanne James has a background in writing policy, governance, risk management and regulatory compliance frameworks.
Thankyou for this coherent and persuasive article.
I fear we are at the end of the world as we knew it, likeLy to be a result of so much world-wide conflict. The Australian government doesn’t encourage optimism. I sincerely hope there is a HRW investigation into the Australian military industrial estate reported to parliament.