Prison or Poverty – The Choice of the Israel Deportees

For Eritrean and Sudanese asylum-seekers facing deportation from Israel's Holot detention centre, the future is bleak. Those who have gone before describe a hand-to-mouth existence in Uganda or no freedom of movement in Rwanda.

"There was no difference with the life in Israel," Abush Mekonen, one of eight Eritrean asylum-seekers deported to Rwanda in July 2014, told IRIN. Mekonen said they had been promised jobs in Rwanda but instead were confined to a hotel. "We were not allowed to move or go out."

Israel has been encouraging asylum-seekers to leave the country for the past year by offering them one-off grants of $3,500 and one-way tickets home or to "safe" third countries in Africa. At the end of March, Interior Minister Gilad Erdan gave asylum-seekers 30 days to return to their own countries or accept "voluntary" deportation. Refusal to do either will result in a hearing followed by possible indefinite detention in a prison for irregular migrants called Sa'aronim. In the past year, about 7,000 have opted to return home, while 1,500 accepted so-called voluntary deportation to third countries, according to immigration figures. Although the government has not named the third countries being used for deportations, testimonies gathered from deportees suggest they are Uganda and Rwanda.

Returning to Eritrea was not on option, he added. "If I agreed to go back home, I would be heading straight away to prison. We had no choice; we opted to be deported to Rwanda." Miki Bereket, another Eritrean asylum-seeker deported last July, said the group was originally offered two options before being told it had to be Rwanda. "When we reached there, we realized we were not wanted in Rwanda either," he said.

The Hotline for Refugees and Migrant Workers spoke with asylum-seekers already sent to both Rwanda and Uganda. Reut Michaeli, the hotline's executive director, said their testimonies showed neither Uganda nor Rwanda should be considered "safe" countries. "Documents and money are taken from the asylum seekers when they arrive from Israel and they are not granted any legal status or given formal protection from deportation," he explained. "They are forced to keep searching for refuge in other places and are exposed to abuse and exploitation." He described the transfer of asylum-seekers to other countries without agreements and commitments to ensure they will be protected as "a blatant violation of international law."

"Uganda is a free country," said Bereket, speaking in the capital, Kampala. "But it's hard to cope with life and survive in Uganda without money."

Israel To Throw Out African Refugees

There are currently about 42,000 citizens of Eritrea and Sudan in Israel, of which some 2,000 are being held in the Holot detention facility in the Negev. According to data the state provided the High Court, 5,803 citizens of Sudan and Eritrea left Israel last year, 1,093 of them to third countries. Until now, Israel has not revealed the names of the third countries or the nature of the agreements, if any, reached with them, but it is known that asylum seekers have been sent to Rwanda and Uganda. A Haaretz investigation published last April revealed that those asylum seekers who left Israel for Rwanda and Uganda had no basic rights and no legal status in those countries. This made survival virtually impossible, prompting them to leave Rwanda and Uganda and resume being refugees once again. According to the United Nations refugee convention, asylum seekers cannot be sent to any country unless there is an agreement with that country that ensures safeguarding their rights and welfare, notes Oded Feller, an immigration lawyer with the Association of Civil Rights in Israel.

“The government of Israel has refused to expose any agreements with the governments of Uganda and Rwanda, and it is doubtful if any such agreements exist in writing. Those countries deny there are agreements at all,” added Feller. 

Israel will begin to deport Eritrean and Sudanese citizens to countries in Africa –  without their consent – under a new policy in the works at the initiative of the Israel Population and Immigration Authority, a branch of the Interior Ministry which along with Justice Ministry representatives have been discussing a policy change. The authority believes that there is no legal barrier to forcing Eritrean and Sudanese citizens to leave Israel for a third country that is not their native country – even if this is done against their will. The Justice Ministry is expected to permit their deportation to neutral states.

According to Asaf Weitzen, the head of the legal department at the Hotline for Refugees and Migrant Workers, the new policy is the state’s way of circumventing a recent supreme court ruling that limits detention to 20 months.

Mutasim Ali, a detainee in Holot who fled Darfur and is a leading activist in Israel’s African asylum seeker community, said, “This is just another technique Israel is using to make our lives miserable and force people to leave,” he said. “There is not a big difference between being detained in Holot and being imprisoned in Saharonim [a prison in the Negev desert]. If we had other options we wouldn’t be in Israel.” 

Israel's Africans

Israel was one of the first nations to ratify the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. Today, the fate of its non-Jewish refugees, including 50,000 African asylum-seekers remains unclear. Some 2,300 refugees from Africa are currently living at the Holot camp in the Israeli Negev-desert. This year has been rainy and cold, and the barracks have no heating. An Israeli human rights organization has been trying to raise awareness about the plight of Africans stuck in the camp. But the refugees, many from Darfur and Eritrea, have little hope of getting accepted as refugees in Israel. The asylum-seekers have protested against Israel's treatment, hoping to get rights based on the United Nation Convention on Refugees. But chances seem slim they will be granted refugee status in Israel and be allowed to start a new life.

Listen to this report by Deutsche Welle

http://www.dw.de/african-asylum-seekers-in-israel-stuck-in-limbo/a-17720969

Uganda and Israeli Racism

 A century ago, Theodor Herzl - the father of modern political Zionism - proposed Uganda as a temporary refuge for persecuted Jews. Uganda is now on the receiving end of other persecuted peoples, this time African refugees who have sought asylum in Israel only to be imprisoned in detention facilities and then returned to the Africa.

 The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in a February 2014 article titled "Israel secretly flying asylum seekers to Uganda", harsh conditions in the detention centres plus nominal financial compensation have facilitated the deportation of many migrants under the guise of "voluntary departure". Uganda's denial of the existence of any deportation agreement with Israel renders accountability for human life even less of an option

The Israeli director of the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants on this non-solution to refugee plight: "It is known that Uganda deports asylum seekers to their countries of origin." The organisation also said that " 'voluntary departure' is the result of heavy and illegal psychological pressure on detained, isolated and desperate asylum seekers, which more than once has included threats and lies....the position of the UN High Commissioner on Refugees is that people cannot be considered to be acting of their own free will if the choice they have is between detention and being sent back to their country".

One  reason for the disingenuous rendering of a "voluntary" exodus of refugees is, of course, to prevent an already precarious demographic balance in Israel from tipping in favour of non-Jewish non-whites. There has been political incitement to anti-African violence and the forcible injection of Ethiopian women with contraceptives.  The Israeli regime insists on referring to African asylum seekers as "infiltrators", which connotes criminality and facilitates the illusion of a steady stream of enemies that must be combated. Between November 2012 and May 2013 the Jewish state had approved only one asylum application from a population of approximately 60,000 non-Jewish African asylum seekers in Israel. The applicant happened to be an albino.

"When Israel rounds up and deports African refugees, it makes a mockery of the millions of Jews who died during World War II because no one would grant them shelter,"  Israeli-Canadian journalist David Sheen noted.

Apparently so indistinguishable from one another in their blackness that they can be repatriated to any old place in Africa.

 What does Uganda stand to gain from participating in outsourced inhumanity? A 2013 Vice magazine report details the perks of the arrangement: Weapons discounts and military training for African countries willing to take on Israel's dirty work.  Uganda's interest in Israeli weapons is perhaps less than surprising given the behaviour of its own army and security forces, often characterised by torture and other human rights violations. In 2003, Haaretz ran a story on Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's visit to Israel for the purpose of "arms shopping", an excursion that was said to have been "arranged by an arms merchant, Amos Golan of the Silver Shadow company, who represents IAI [Israel Aircraft Industries] and other Israeli defence industries in Uganda".

 A Vice magazine article notes that, as of September of last year, approximately 40,000 of the African "infiltrators" were from Eritrea, "a country with one of the worst human rights records on Earth". The author goes on to comment, with well-directed sarcasm, that "these people aren't coming to Israel because they fancy upping their matzah intake or living on Palestinian land illegally; they're genuinely trying to escape persecution and find a way to survive".

From Al Jazeera

Israeli Racism

Recently we have witnessed the shameful rounding up and deportation of Africans from Saudi Arabia.  In 2011 in Tel Aviv, a thousand Israelis ran rampant through the streets, smashing and looting African-operated businesses and physically assaulting any dark-skinned person they came across.

The rioters were encouraged by the likes of lawmaker Miri Regev, who announced that African migrants are "a cancer in the body" of the nation.  Regev "apologised” after the violence, not to African asylum seekers, but to Israeli cancer victims, for comparing them to Africans and was appointed by PM Benjamin Netanyahu to head the Knesset Interior Committee, the very body that decides the fate of those asylum seekers.  Netanyahu has pledged to rid the country of its "tens of thousands of infiltrators" from Africa.

The persecution suffered by  Africans often occurs in the countries from which they have fled and to which Israel has no qualms about illegally deporting them.  Israeli-Canadian journalist David Sheen, who reports relentlessly on the hazards to African existence in the Jewish state,  remarks: "When Israel rounds up and deports African refugees, it makes a mockery of the millions of Jews who died during World War II because no one would grant them shelter." Since Israel took over responsibility for reviewing refugee status requests from UNHCR, out of the 60,000 non-Jewish African asylum seekers living in Israel, Israel has approved only one single solitary application. And that one African woman that the State of Israel… has deigned to bequeath refugee status upon - is an albino.

Although the fundamental reason for restricting African access to Israel is to prevent a tipping of the demographic balance in favour of non-Jews, the circumstances facing Ethiopian Jewish immigrants indicate that religion only gets you so far. Lest the target national colour scheme be irreparably disrupted as well, Israel has been known to forcibly inject Ethiopian females with contraceptives.

Former Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari declares: "We are waging a war against the phenomenon of assimilation."

from one hell to another hell

More than 2 million Somalis have sought haven in U.N.-supported refugee camps in neighboring countries and in settlements in nearly every region of Somalia.

They had walked for 10 days. Djiboutian border authorities had stopped them on a recent day in order to speak with a visiting U.N. delegation. Djiboutians consider such people illegal migrants, but they only occasionally enforce the law, especially if the migrants are passing through to another country.

"Are you fully aware of the dangers?" asked Antonio Guterres, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees.

"We know the risks," replied Abdullahi Ibrahim, 28. "But we are escaping hunger. If we had enough to eat, do you think we would leave our mothers, brothers and sisters?"

"We are running away from poverty," said Mohammed Said, 17. "We want to go to Yemen to send money back to our families. They are counting on us."

"They travel from one hell to another hell," said Ahmed Abdullahi, a U.N. refugee protection officer

A blind eye

Jimmy Mubenga died as three security guards restrained him with what is believed to be excessive force while being deported to Angola. Last month, a senior journalist at a radio station, accused by the ruling party of trying to incite rebellion, was shot dead in Luanda. In 2004, Mfulumpinga Nlandu Victor, an outspoken politician, was also shot dead in the capital. In 2007, the leader of the main opposition party, Isaías Samakuva, survived an assassination attempt unharmed. There are many lesser known cases of systematic abuse, detentions, torture, deaths, but none of these appear on the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office's (FCO) country profile. Unlike nearby Zimbabwe, Angola does not even feature in the UK's list of countries whose human rights record are of concern.

British business interests, particularly oil interests, are undoubtedly the underlying reason. Angola produces about 1.9m barrels of oil a day. One of the UK's largest companies, BP, has substantial interests there and describes Angola as one of its "six new profit centres". BP's involvement in the country began four decades ago: to date it has invested $8bn. Other British businesses operating in Angola include De La Rue, Lonrho plc, Crown Agents, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Standard Chartered and KPMG. According to Oxfam, British arms brokers were actively selling arms to Angola during the war.

The irony is that many British people take it for granted that our respect for human rights and justice is second to none. Often, when talking about dictatorships in other parts of the world, we assume we have a moral authority that other nations can only envy. The death of Mubenga while in the care of the British justice system suggests otherwise.

Swedish Blindness on Somalia

Swedish authorities have recently ruled that failed asylum seekers from the Somali capital, Mogadishu, can be sent back as there is no "armed conflict" there.

The Swedish immigration agency said that Swedish law says there is no armed conflict in Mogadishu because rebels there do not control territory. Sweden automatically grants asylum to anyone from an area in which something "more like your traditional civil war" exists, where "rebellion forces have territorial control in a part of the city, the country or the region," senior immigration official Dan Eliasson told AFP news agency. "This is not the case in Mogadishu," said the general director of the Swedish Migration Board.

This after 17 people were killed in a mortar attack on Mogadishu's main market on Thursday. The UN says one million people are living rough in Somalia - including 60% of Mogadishu's population. About 200,000 people have fled the city in the last month. The UN's describes Somalia as the world's worst humanitarian disaster . Somali asylum seekers in Sweden can be sent home unless they prove lives personally under threat.

The immigration service also ruled last July that there was "no armed conflict in Iraq" on the same grounds, determining that Sweden could send Iraqi asylum seekers back to the war-torn country if they could not prove they would personally be threatened there.

Congolese in UK

Campaigners say failed asylum-seekers sent back to the Democratic Republic of Congo become prime targets because they are seen as traitors and warn that people sent back have disappeared without trace but plane-loads of rejected asylum-seekers have been returned . Amnesty International warns that executions, murders, arbitrary arrests and imprisonment, torture and life-threatening prison conditions are routine in the DRC.

The British embassy in Kinshasa says it has no evidence that they face mistreatment upon their return. Baroness Scotland of Asthal, the former home office minister, has said there is "no objective evidence that those returning to the DRC are being specifically targeted for abuse simply because they have sought asylum".

The Bishop of Winchester protested recently that the Home Office "always makes Kinshasa sound like Dorking" and that everyone with experience of the DRC - including himself - found the "mantra-like assurances of the department simply incredible".

A court challenge to the Home Office's insistence that the country is safe is planned for September. Activists will present a dossier of information about the dangers to opposition activists and other dissidents in the DRC.

There are an estimated 6,500 Congolese refugees in Britain. The numbers of asylum-seekers have dropped from 1,475 in 2004 to 1,080 in 2005 and 570 last year. There were 125 in the first three months of this year. Just over 20 per cent of their applications are granted.

The Congo Support Project co-ordinator said: "The situation is dire. The treatment of failed asylum-seekers is very bad - there is a very high risk of people [being] arrested when they are sent back."

Donna Covey, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: "It will be safer and fairer to halt forced removals while the courts are considering the guidance about the Congo."