Cambodia, Cuba, Somalia…we’ve called them boat people, a safe euphemism for the horror refugees encounter.

As Canadians sat in theatres this weekend watching Amazing Grace, the story of abolitionist William Wilberforce,  human smugglers were tossing people overboard to evade capture.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says:

SAN`A, Yemen - Smugglers taking illegal migrants from Somalia to Yemen forced hundreds of Africans overboard in stormy seas in an effort to make a fast getaway from security forces, officials said Monday. Thirty-one bodies have been found and nearly 90 people remained missing.

Passengers who resisted the smugglers were stabbed or beaten with wooden and steel clubs, then thrown into the water where some were attacked by sharks, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said, citing survivors.

“Several recovered bodies showed signs of severe mutilation,” UNHCR said. “Survivors also reported that several Ethiopian women and at least one Somali were raped and abused by the smugglers during the voyage from Bosaso in Somalia’s Puntland region. Survivors also alleged that some Yemeni security forces confiscated their money once they reached shore.”

22 years before Wilberforce was able to get his abolition legislation through parliament, Quakers were lobbying to end the slave trade. After the legislation was passed, slave ship captains heading to the Americas would toss their human cargo overboard in order to avoid the Royal Navy. 11 million Africans were brought to the New World by traders. When enforcement began, many of those freed from slave ships were taken by warships to the West Indies to work on plantations. Because of the secrecy of slave trading in the 17 and 18th century historians do not know how many Africans drowned when ship crews tried to evade blockades. 

Africans fleeing war and famine are being thrown overboard again. 

Since January 2006 at least 30,000 people have fled violence and hardship in Somalia and Ethiopia for Yemen, according to UNHCR. About 500 people have died and at least 300 are missing and believed dead. Out of 88,000 registered refugees in Yemen, about 84,000 are Somali, UNHCR said.