Saudis accused of mass murder of African migrants

 The Lid:

It’s bad enough that the Biden administration has responded so weakly to Saudi Arabia’s massacres of African migrants. But now it turns out that U.S. officials have been covering up what they knew and when they knew it.

Last week, the New York Times reported that since last October, the administration has been aware that Saudi Arabian border guards have slaughtered “hundreds, perhaps thousands” of unarmed African civilians. U.S. officials responded that they found out about it only in December.

But now, in response to public pressure, the State Department has admitted that it knew about the killings months earlier—in the summer of 2022. The administration also acknowledges that the U.S. has been training Saudi border security forces. However, it claims the training was provided only to maritime guards, not the border guards carrying out the killings.

Human rights groups say the unarmed African migrants approached the Saudi border hoping to find work or receive asylum from persecution; the Saudis responded with gunfire, mutilations, and sexual atrocities.

What has the Biden administration done with the information? U.S. officials “asked Saudi Arabia to investigate the episodes,” the Times reports. “Saudi officials have not responded.”

The murders do not meet the definition of genocide. Still, the administration’s initial cover-up just when it learned of the atrocities is painfully reminiscent of how the Roosevelt administration covered up its own suppression of information about the mass murder of Jews in Nazi Europe.

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The Saudis should be held accountable.  They do not have to kill them to keep them out of the country.