Thousands of African asylum seekers and their local supporters are protesting against an Israeli plan to deport them.
Two refugee rights groups, the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants
and Aid Organization for Refugees and Asylums seekers in Israel (ASSAF),
said authorities handed the asylum seekers “deportation notices” and
imprisoned them at the Saharonim prison in the south of Israel.
To protest the deportation, inmates at the Holot prison in the
Negev desert first embarked on a hunger strike. African migrants also
went out into the streets, protesting in front of embassies like that of
Rwanda, and hoping to pressure officials to end their expulsion. Some
of those demonstrating also painted their faces white, suggesting they
were being sent into danger because Israel didn’t believe their black
lives mattered.
The current deportation plan threatens to remove thousands of
Africans, many of them from Sudan and Eritrea. The United Nations
refugee agency estimates there are 27,000 Eritreans and 7,700 Sudanese
in Israel, who say they fled war, persecution, and conscription.
Officials, however, call them “infiltrators” in search of economic
opportunities, and who constitute a threat to Israel’s social fabric and
Jewish identity.
The government has proposed giving each migrant $3,500 to leave,
with the option of going home or to a third country. If they don’t leave
by end of March, migrants face indefinite incarceration. Immigration
officials are also hiring civilian inspectors to help investigate and
arrest the migrants.
Israel’s plan to return refugees has drawn criticism from human
rights advocates both in and outside the country. Academics, activists,
and prominent Israeli writers have called on prime minister Benjamin
Netanyahu not to deport the asylum seekers, saying the nation has “no
refugee problem.”
Rwanda, where many of the migrants are being reportedly sent,
recently said that it was “wrong and offensive” that asylum seekers were
being given the option of going to Rwanda or to jail.
Research has
shown that those previously deported to Rwanda and Uganda continue to
face danger and death, even risking their lives by taking perilous
onward journeys to Europe.
Both Hotline and ASSAF criticized the recent arrests, noting that
two of the detained Eritreans had their asylum requests denied even
though they survived torture. “This is the first step in a what is a
globally unprecedented deportation operation, a move tainted by racism
and complete disregard for the life and dignity of asylum seekers.”
Israel considers the vast majority of the nearly 40,000 migrants to be
job seekers and says it has no legal obligation to keep them. Critics
have called the government plan unethical and a stain on Israel’s image
as a refuge for Jewish migrants.
Organizers say some 15,000 gathered in south Tel Aviv Saturday.
