Thousands of migrants from Ethiopia are being held against their will and dying in prison camps built by Saudi Arabian authorities earlier this year, according to a groundbreaking investigation by The Sunday Telegraph.

Ethiopians being held in prison camps in Al Shumaisi, near the holy city of Mecca, and in Jazan, a port town near Yemen, spoke to reporters from the newspaper and sent photos of the horrifying conditions they are forced to live in. 

Thousands of people have been forcibly held in tiny rooms since the Saudi Arabian government began rounding up Black immigrants because of unfounded concerns that they would spread COVID-19 to the country's population.

“We eat a tiny piece of bread in the day and rice in the evening. There’s almost no water, and the toilets are overflowing. It spills over to where we eat. The smell, we grow accustomed to. But there’s over a hundred of us in a room, and the heat is killing us,” said one young Ethiopian man to the newspaper.

The camps have become rife with disease. Photos shared by the newspaper show dozens of people sleeping right next to each other, and one person inside said multiple people have committed suicide or died since being brought there.  

“If I see that there is no escape, I will take my own life. Others have already. My only crime is leaving my country in search of a better life. But they beat us with whips and electric cords as if we were murderers,” one source said through a phone that had been smuggled into one of the camps. 

"Plenty of inmates are suicidal or suffering from mental illnesses as a result of living this for five months. The guards mock us, they say ‘your government doesn’t care, what are we supposed to do with you?” another person told the newspaper.

Reporters for The Sunday Telegraph said they could not share all of the photos they received because some were too graphic, depicting the bodies of those who have hung themselves or died from heat exhaustion.

“A young boy, about sixteen, managed to hang himself last month. The guards just throw the bodies out back as if it was trash,” said one migrant. 

“COVID-19? Who knows? There are a lot of diseases here. Everyone is sick here; everyone has something,” he added.  

In a video shared with the newspaper, one man can be heard saying, “The toilets are clogged. We tried unblocking them, but we’re unable to. So we live in this filth, we sleep in it too.”

Some of those who spoke to the newspaper criticized the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the government for leaving them in the camps despite full knowledge of what was going on. 

“To [the Saudis] or even to Abiy, it’s like we’re ants. When we die, it’s as if an ant died, no one cares or pays attention,” one man said. 

Through satellite imaging and geotracking, the newspaper was able to find where the facilities were and saw that the photos they received from people inside were from just one building inside an entire complex. They noted that there could be thousands more in the other buildings. Last month, videos from the women's camps sent to Human Rights Watch emerged as well. 

Many of those who spoke to the The Sunday Telegraph said they had been in the camps since April and had lost dozens of friends and family members to illness or disease. Some said the guards also beat them and hurl racist slurs at them while doing it, even sharing photos of the bruises on their backs. 

In March, Saudi Arabia faced international criticism in leaked United Nations documents for forcibly expelling about 3,000 Ethiopian migrants, according to Reuters. The country had plans to deport more than 200,000 people but stopped due to public pressure.

Human Rights Watch also reported that Ethiopians were forced by rebel groups in Yemen to leave the country and cross the border into Saudi Arabia, with dozens of people being shot if they refused. Many were also shot upon entering Saudi Arabia, but most were put into prison camps along with the hundreds of thousands who were not deported. 

Saudi Arabia has spent decades bringing in millions of migrants to handle low wage jobs and positions that Saudi Arabian citizens do not want to hold. The country routinely accepts migrants from across Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia under the often criticized "kafala" sponsorship system, which ties a migrants' immigration status to their employer. The system has led to widespread sexual and physical abuse of both female and male migrants.

While The Sunday Telegraph reported that the country has about seven million migrants, other outlets like TRT World pegged the figure was much higher at 12 million. 

"Photos emerging from detention centers in southern Saudi Arabia show that authorities there are subjecting Horn of Africa migrants to squalid, crowded, and dehumanizing conditions with no regard for their safety or dignity,” said Adam Coogle, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in the Middle East, in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph.  

“Saudi Arabia, a wealthy country, has long held undocumented migrants including many from the Horn of Africa in conditions that are so crowded, unsanitary, and appalling that migrants often emerge traumatized or sick. It’s fair to question whether Saudi authorities are purposefully allowing these detention conditions to exist in order to punish migrants,” Coogle added.  

Both Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia have yet to release statements on the British newspaper's findings. Rumors of the heinous conditions of the camps have been swirling for months, and in August the Guardian released a similar story detailing the abuse Somalian migrants faced on a daily basis. 

"We have been left to die here," one man told The Sunday Telegraph. 

Black immigrantsCovid-19Ethiopian-MigrantsSaudi Arabia