Human Rights Watch’s Devon Lum takes us inside the digital investigation into the killing of Ethiopian migrants by Saudi border guards, which uses visual evidence to illustrate survivors’ journey and ensure their stories are not dismissed.

On 6 March 2022, a Facebook account shared a video showing a group of at least 67 people descending a steep trail to a valley floor 335 metres below. In it, seven members of the group carry a woman by her arms and legs, slipping on the loose shale and dirt while doing their best to avoid scraping her back on the rocks.

The woman grits her teeth in pain as they lower her down the slope. Her thighs are soaked in blood. Some higher on the hill look toward the scene with confusion, others with fear, but most with resignation. With exhaustion.

This is one of over 350 pieces of visual evidence I collected and analysed for the new Human Rights Watch report revealing the mass killings of Ethiopian migrants by Saudi border guards.

Using visual evidence and interviews with survivors, the report documents how, from at least March 2022 to June 2023, Saudi border guards systematically shot and shelled Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers trying to cross into Saudi Arabia from Yemen.

“If committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants, these systematic and widespread killings would amount to a crime against humanity”

Ethiopians fleeing poverty, drought, conflict, and serious human rights abuses have been met with a storm of bullets and explosives. Hundreds, potentially thousands, have been killed.

The 38 survivors we interviewed shared accounts of unconscionable violence. They described how Saudi border guards slaughtered groups using explosive weapons or shooting people who tried to cross the border, reducing several hundred to dozens in minutes or hours.