Wednesday, 25 January 2006

At least five people have been reported dead and hundreds in bad conditions for hunger and maltreatment at temporary detention centres for foreign people in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The centres are deportation centres places where illegal foreign workers are detained before deporting back to their homes as what locally known (TARXIIL).

Muna Zubeyr, young Somali girl among the detainees of a Tarxil Centre in Jedah, Saudi Arabia told shabelle through the phone that some people in the detention centres dead for hunger and other bad conditions while they are detained for undisclosed time.

She said that people are given dirty food and no one cares whether they are in good conditions or not.

Muna also said that according to the narrowness of the Cells, people some times suffocate since some of them are too old to live in such inconvenient place.

“A cell of 4m.square is detained about 180 people and that is over crowded,” she said.

According to the over crowd, Muna said people sleep two shifts, some of them do sleep at night while the other group sleep in the day.
The young girl also stated, Saudi police officers maltreat them daily and beat them whenever they come into the cell.

“When we have asked the Saudi police to deport us to our country they told us that our Embassy is delaying our deportation period” she said.
She said that officers told them they would be deported when Somali pilgrims are finished taking them back to home.

It’s a common practice for Saudi Authorities to ignore the violations as well as rights depraving against Somalia poor community that go to Saudi Arabia to earn daily bread while their country is experiencing 15 years of anarchy.