Secret phone calls from a Saudi jail

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0:30I'm Greg Jenner, host of You're Dead to Me, the comedy show that takes history seriously, and we are travelling back to 8th century BCE to trace the origins of the Iliad and Odyssey, epic poems that became backbones of Western literature. Join me and my fantastic guests as we unpack the stories of ancient Greek culture, war and triumph, and have a laugh while we do it. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye.

0:58Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

1:13Welcome to the Fifth Floor with me, Tharanak Amidi. The BBC World Service broadcasts in 45 languages around the world. Our job here at The Fifth Floor is to bring you the best of those stories in English and to also get you closer to the extraordinary work our journalists do. Coming up today, we hear about India's largest youth movement in decades, the Cockroach Janta Party.

1:40Aklilu Tsegay:It started when one of the chief justices in a remark during a legal hearing said that young people who are not employed are actually just wasting their time. They're like cockroaches. This was the comment which we did not know would land so strongly among the young people of the country. Abhijit Deepke actually created a satirical Instagram page and a Twitter handle called Cockroach Janta Party, calling out to all the unemployed youth of the country to unite and come out on the streets as cockroaches, refusing to go away. But first, in a sprawling prison in the Asir province of southwestern Saudi Arabia, hundreds of young Ethiopian men are currently sat on death row, not knowing when it might be their turn.

2:26In the hope of getting their voices heard, some of the prisoners managed to get hold of the mobile phone number for the BBC's Tigrinia Language Service. One of the journalists who spoke to the prisoners is Aklilu Tsitsagai, who has also been reporting on the story. Aklilu joins me now. Welcome to the fifth floor, Aklilu. Okay, thank you. Just tell us, how have most of these men ended up in this situation on death row in Saudi Arabia? Most of the men I spoke to had left Ethiopia in search of work and better opportunities. And many of them came from Tigray region, which had been devastated by war.

3:07So for many young people in Tigray, the war had taken away opportunities to study, work, and build a future. so jobs were scarce and the economic situation was extremely difficult. So for some of them, migration became one of the few options they felt they had. According to the prisoners, most had travelled through irregular migration routes, often passing through Yemen before crossing to Saudi Arabia. And most of the prisoners we interviewed had been convicted of drug-related offences, particularly charges linked to smuggling qat. And for those listeners who don't know, qat is a plant, a substance that is used in Yemen widely, and it is legal in that country.

3:57Correct, yeah. Some told us they had been recruited by smugglers or persuaded to transport goods across the border without fully understanding the consequences. Their stories were different, but there was a common pattern. Many were young, emotionally vulnerable, and desperate to find opportunities after their lives and had been disrupted by conflict. Unfortunately, that journey eventually led them to Saudi prisons and for many to Dezro. So do you remember receiving that first phone call from the prison? What was it like? What were they telling you? The first time I received the call and heard the voice of someone who was on Dezro, So I honestly didn't know how to react.

4:45I was shocked and nervous. And it was difficult to put into words what I was feeling. I already knew that some young Ethiopians had been executed in Saudi Arabia before I received the call. So I was aware of how serious the situation was. But actually, speaking to someone who was facing the death penalty, locked inside a highly guarded prison was completely different. As a journalist, I have had many difficult conversations, but this felt very different. I knew that the person on the other end of the phone was calling from a prison where his life was at stake. that made the first conversation incredibly emotional and something I will never forget.

5:35Akhlelu, how did they come to this decision and why did they come to this decision to actually contact BBC Tigrinya? These prisoners were trying to reach out to the outside world in any way they could. They were looking for a way to tell their stories, explain their situation and ultimately seek justice. Some of them had already managed to speak to human rights organizations, but they saw the BBC as an important platform that could bring wider attention to what was happening to them. Many of the prisoners speak Tigrinya language, which is why they decided to contact BBC Tigrinya. And they knew the BBC had services in Tigrinya, Amharic, Oromo, the Ethiopian languages.

6:25And they believed that if their stories reached to the BBC, they could reach a much wider audience and potentially have an impact. So when they called you, what did they tell you about the conditions in the prison and the situation they were in? Most of the prisoners we spoke to were being held in Kamis Mushaid in Asi region. And according to the information we received, 15 Ethiopians had already been executed in Kamis Mushaid since June. Fifteen? Fifteen, yeah, Ethiopians from this Kamis Mushaid only. So when I asked them about the prison condition, one prisoner told me that a cell designed for around 90 people was holding more than 200 inmates.

7:11And they also spoke about serious health conditions. Some prisoners were suffering from chronic illness such as hypertension and diabetes. And one of the most disturbing details they shared was how they tried to cope with the changing temperatures. During the day, many of them stayed half-dressed because of the intense heat inside the cells. And at night, when temperatures dropped, some said they wrapped themselves in plastic bags, originally provided for collecting rubbish because they had nothing else to keep them warm. Actually, when you spoke to these men and when you were putting this report together, do you know roughly how many Ethiopian inmates were in prison and what percentage of them were on death row?

8:04The prisoners told us that the facility consists of six different buildings or blocks, housing inmates from several countries, including Saudi nationals. The information we received suggested that there were at least 200 Ethiopian prisoners who had been sentenced to death. Because access to the prison is extremely limited, it was difficult to independently verify these figures. However, the accounts we received from multiple prisoners pointed to a significant number of Ethiopians being held in the prison system, including a large number on Deserol. How often were you having these conversations with these inmates?

8:49Probably the prison authorities didn't know that they were making these phone calls. How often were you speaking to them? During the first weeks in May 2026, I was speaking to them two or three times a day. Yeah, the calls came from different cells and different times during the day, late at night, sometimes even after midnight. But whenever they called, I felt it was important to answer and listen to what they had to say. They wanted their voice to be heard. And many of them were desperate to tell their stories. And emotionally, it was difficult as a human being. It was painful knowing that they were living under death sentence.

9:32and didn't know when their execution may take place. That uncertainty was one of the most heartbreaking aspects of our conversation with them. At the same time, I had to separate my emotions from my professional responsibilities, as you know, as a journalist. And that's such a difficult thing, actually, that I totally understand. When they were talking to you, what was the overriding feeling that they had? Were they scared? Were they hopeful maybe that these conversations could somehow save their lives? What was going on? Yeah, of course, you could hear their emotions in every phone call. Dispiration was probably the strongest feeling that come across.

10:18But there was also fear, hopelessness. And in many cases, the men broke down during our conversation. They cried, pleaded for mercy and spoke about feeling trapped and abandoned. One prisoner I spoke to, he's a 23-year-old on Dezro. I spoke to him more than five times. And during every conversation, I could hear the anger in his voice. In fact, his frustration was mainly directed at his own government and at the Ethiopian embassy in Saudi Arabia. he told me that he felt ignored and abandoned and that at times it seemed that though they were no longer considered citizens of their own country while each prisoner's experience was different the commentary running through almost all of our conversation was a deep sense of desperation and the feeling that they had been forgotten.

11:22Were you able to speak to any of their families? Were their families aware of their situations and trying to maybe contact authorities? Yeah, one of the most heartbreaking aspects of this story was that most of their families were not aware that they had been sentenced to death. And their parents and relatives in Ethiopia knew that they were in prison, but many believed their sons would eventually be released after serving their sentence. So several prisoners told me that they had been deliberately chosen not to tell their families the truth because they didn't want to cause them more pain and anxiety.

12:05One of the prisoners I interviewed put it starkly when he said, I would rather prefer my parents are told that I'm executed than telling them now that I am sentenced to death and waiting for my turn. So I found these conversations particularly difficult because many of these young men were carrying the emotional burden alone while trying to protect their families, you know, from the reality of what they were facing. Yeah. What kind of impact has this report had? And has there been any reaction from the Ethiopian government to all of this? After interviewing the prisoners and gathering information from different sources, we contacted both the Saudi and Ethiopian governments to seek their comments, their responses.

12:58We sent several emails and made multiple phone calls to ask specific questions about the situation of Ethiopians on Dezro. But we didn't receive a direct response from other governments before our report was published. And more recently, the Ethiopian government issued a statement saying that it was working with Saudi authorities on the situation of Ethiopian citizens in Saudi Arabia. However, the statement didn't specifically address this issue of Ethiopians who had been sentenced to death. We also contacted Ethiopia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ask specifically about the prisoners on this row.

13:42But officials told us that they had nothing to add beyond the statement that they had already been released. The issue has received much greater public attention since the story was published. At the same time, the Ethiopian government has continued efforts to repatriate hundreds of Ethiopian migrants from Saudi Arabia, with many already having returned home with government support. But for prisoners who spoke to, simply having their stories heard and brought to an international audience was important. And their hope was that increased attention would encourage governments and other relevant institutions to take a closer look at their cases.

14:30Actually, the piece was published on Saturday, 1st of August, and you said that five Ethiopian men had been executed on the Monday before. It's been almost two weeks since then, at the time that we are actually recording this interview. Do you know if any other Ethiopian men have been executed in Saudi Arabia since then? Yeah, yeah, unfortunately. On the same day our report was published, we received the information that three more Ethiopians had been executed. That was devastating news, especially for the prisoners who had been speaking to inside the prison. Many of them were already living with constant fear and uncertainty.

15:14and hearing that more executions had taken place only reinforced their fears. Even after the story was published, the risk facing those still on this road remained very real, you know. Thank you so much, Aklilu. Thank you very much, Faranak. That was Aklilu Tizagai from BBC Tigrania. You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

15:46Hello, Greg Jenner here. I'm the host of You're Dead to Me, the BBC comedy show that takes history seriously. Every episode, I pair up a top historian with a fantastic comedian, and we have a lovely, funny, fascinating chat about a different subject from world history. And in this new series, we're beginning with an epic voyage through the story of Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. And that's with Kyle Smith-Bino joining us. And then we'll be learning about Francis Galton and the racist, discredited pseudoscience of eugenics with Desiree Birch. We'll meet many medieval saints in their bone boxes with Rachel Parrott.

16:20So if that sounds like your sort of thing, listen to You're Dead to Me wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Bye.

16:30This is The Fifth Floor and I'm Farina Kami D. In India, July saw some of the biggest protests in the country for many years.

16:48The protesters were young people, particularly students, and they came together under an unusual symbol, the cockroach. They call themselves the Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP, and they are demanding change to the education system in the country. Starting as online satire just a couple of months ago, the CJP is now one of India's most visible youth movements. Sumedha Pal reports for the BBC in India, and she has been covering these protests. And she joins me now from Delhi. Sumedha, welcome to the Fifth Floor. It's great to have you.

17:24Aklilu Tsegay:Thank you, Farhanak. It's fantastic being here. So tell me, the CJP protests were so huge. Could you explain some of the backdrop of all of it and all of the anger? And how did it get to this point? Definitely. What we've seen in the last few weeks and in the last few months, in fact, has been one of the most unprecedented youth movements that India has seen in contemporary history and contemporary times. How it started was that it became a meme and then it turned into a movement. It started when one of the chief justices in a remark during a legal hearing said that young people who are not employed are actually just wasting their time.

18:07Aklilu Tsegay:They're like cockroaches. This was the comment which we did not know would land so strongly among the young people of the country. Abhijit Deepke actually created a satirical Instagram page and a Twitter handle called Cockroach Janta Party, calling out to all the unemployed youth of the country to unite and come out on the streets as cockroaches, refusing to go away. Very quickly, the page on Instagram garnered millions and millions of followers. we've seen how much it spread but underlying all of this was very real issues that the young people felt were not being addressed the fact that unemployment in our country is at an all-time high a lot of these competitive exams that young people are preparing for often end up in paper leaks recently we saw in the month of may a very big exam that millions of young students apply for it had been leaked and a cancellation had been announced this was not the first time that a paper of this scale was leaked.

19:05Aklilu Tsegay:And over the years, this anger has built up in students and aspirants who have to consistently over and over sit for these examinations. And they pay a huge price in order to do so. They spend a lot of money at coaching centers trying to afford training to be able to pass these examinations. So every time a paper is leaked, be it a state examination, be it a central examination, it essentially means that the exam stands cancelled, students then now have to wait for new dates, and they have to prepare all over again. And these examinations are extremely competitive with very limited seats, which means that several thousand students are competing for one particular seat.

19:47Aklilu Tsegay:And therefore, there is a lot of pressure, there is a lot of anxiety, which these aspirants go through while preparing for every single exam that they sit for. So there were a lot of these aspirations and anxieties that were at the center stage of what actually constituted this movement beyond a meme. So what would you say was the last straw that broke the camel's back and made people actually say, OK, we've had enough. We are coming to the streets. So the movement started, they hit the national capital. There were people who started gathering in this protest space in Delhi. there was a hunger strike that went on for over 20 days by young student activists.

20:27Aklilu Tsegay:And so many people felt that if they can come and hit the streets, why can't we? All of your feeds from Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, they were flooded with the CJP content. And people felt that this is a space where young people belonged and they could come and find other young people who are experiencing the same anxieties, the same anger as others. So you were there underground covering these protests. Paint a picture of what the atmosphere was like. What were you seeing? What were you hearing? Yeah, this is in the heart of the national capital. There are two, three streets which are designated protest spots.

21:06Aklilu Tsegay:We all see that they are regularly occupied by different demonstrators, but the CGP protest was different. They had set up tents there. There were camps there. There was food being distributed all through the day, through the night. There were people who were thronging the site from as early as 6 a.m. in the morning and staying there until 3 a.m. at night. There were people with interesting posters. There were people who had dressed up as cockroaches. Someone had dressed up as Teletubby because they did not want their parents to know that they were there. People had turned up in Spider-Man costumes and whatnot.

21:42Aklilu Tsegay:It was absolutely one of the most colorful protests I have ever seen. And were there only students in these protests or did you see people from other walks of life? Yes, definitely. There were young professionals who were joining in at some point. The farmers of the country also expressed support and they tried to come and join the movement. Of course, at the core of the movement was this frustration with the Indian education system. But at the same time, what I saw transpiring in the days that I spent on the ground was that this was also becoming more about how as a country we need change. And there were frustrations that people were sharing from all walks of life, from young professionals who are dealing with extremely long working hours, low salaries, excessive competition, to young students who again were very disenchanted with the future that they were hoping for.

22:34Aklilu Tsegay:There were a lot of women and middle class, you know, parents who had shown support. An interesting person that I spoke to was a mother of two of her children. And I asked her why she'd shown up with a whole family. She said that I was married off very young, and I could not actually educate myself. I never got to go to college. Today, I felt like something is changing. This was a moment where I felt that I could take my family, I could take my children, and I could think about my own life and my own future as well as the future of this country. So there were all these people sort of coming together because Delhi has also not experienced since the pandemic any gathering or any demonstration of a scale like this.

23:19And when you were there, did you feel like their demands were clear and were they united in what they were asking for?

23:28Aklilu Tsegay:So the demands have been or had been very clear. There were two, three things that were primarily the central points that the CJP was raising. One was the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan. They were also asking the government to scrap these entrance tests, which had been completely failing for a long time. They wanted the government to come up with a strong mechanism to investigate all these paper leaks. 20th July was a day when all these young people had given a call to march to the Indian parliament as a way of symbolic protest. And this march was met with a lot of resistance from the police and the administration, which in its attempt to sort of disperse the protesters used tear gas and they used pellet guns and they were also using batons to sort of disperse these crowds.

24:20Aklilu Tsegay:What that meant was that a lot of young people were injured. There was a lot of anger, especially among the Indian middle classes who saw this play out. on their phone screens, on their TV screens, seeing young people being beaten up ruthlessly on the Indian streets was something that really shook up a lot of people. And it made more and more people throng to that protest site. And it really uplifted the momentum from that point onwards. They did get some achievements by protesting. Can you tell us what happened? Absolutely. So after the protests went on for about 37 days, it culminated into a lot of pressure.

24:58Aklilu Tsegay:and finally the education minister of India, he had to resign. This is a big step for young people who are protesting because this was also not something that they had been expecting will happen that easily and in such a short amount of time. But the larger demand of reforms within the Indian education system that became much, much louder. From that point onwards has evolved into something which again India has not witnessed before, which is the engagement of young people and politics. For a long time, globally, and of course, in South Asia, there has been this perception of young people that they seem to be very disengaged with politics, that they are not interested.

25:38Aklilu Tsegay:This was the first time when the government is also beginning to notice that this is a very significant demographic that they have to talk to. The Prime Minister of India has ordered his ministers, his leadership, to actually look into what is happening on social media, to talk to the young people in their language. The Prime Minister has said it's a huge discussion now that how ministers and those sitting in power now need to interact with young people. It is also because they recognize that this is such a strong group and this is a mass that they need to appeal. I think there is also a recognition through these protests of the fact that these young people will determine the future of politics in the country and especially the general elections, which are about to take place in about three years from now.

26:28Aklilu Tsegay:So it's quite interesting to see that the government is now listening to young people. They're making a get ready with me videos on the Internet. They're talking in Gen Z terms and they're trying to understand how young people talk. Suddenly the words clock it or baddie, you know, they're becoming a part of the political vocabulary of the establishment, which was not seen before. That's incredible. Have the protests stopped completely? No, it's rather become a bigger movement now. We've seen that across India, in many, many cities now, there are protests which are being organized by school students or Gen Alpha.