| I've asked before, but just how bad does your homeland have to be when you start to consider Yemen as the promised land? |
The Yemeni coast guard has seized a boat in the Gulf of Aden carrying 42 illegal migrants from Africa, the authorities said on Tuesday.
The coast guard intercepted the boat in Yemeni territorial waters, arresting three crew members and the owner of the vessel, which had come from the Horn of Africa. The migrants were to be handed over to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) “to be returned to the country from which they embarked,” the authorities said without specifying which country.
Would-be migrants from Africa, mainly Ethiopians and Somalis fleeing poverty or violence, frequently set sail for Yemen in the hope of reaching oil-rich Saudi Arabia. In the past five years, more than 500,000 people — mostly Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis — have reached Yemen via the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea following treacherous journeys on vessels that are often overloaded.
Yemen is home to up to two million migrants, mostly illegals who entered from other countries of the Arabian Peninsula, according to unofficial estimates commonly cited by experts and humanitarian organizations.
| Are the Somali refugees in Sa'naa as well behaved as the ones in Minneapolis? |
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