Israeli police forcibly end African migrant protest
Christian Science Monitor - 3 hours ago
By Joshua Mitnick, Correspondent JUNE 29, 2014
Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters
Human rights groups focused on the plight of African asylum seekers in
Israel say the country's Holot detention camp is designed to force
them to return home.
TEL AVIV -- Israeli police today forcibly broke up up a three-day
desert sit-in by hundreds of African migrants who bolted a detention
center to march toward the Egyptian border, where they were rebuffed
by Egyptian soldiers.
The march and sit-in marked a new defiance of Israeli government
policy, which recently began ordering African migrants who entered the
country illegally years ago to leave work and homes in Israeli cities
and report to the Holot desert detention camp. Photographs uploaded to
Twitter by human rights activists showed police dragging migrants to
buses.
Though the government has promised to consider the Africans' requests
for political asylum, the migrants contend no action is being taken
and that indefinite detention at Holot is being used to pressure them
to accept so-called "voluntary departure'' packages to relocate to
third-party African countries. They have asked the United Nations to
intervene on their behalf.
The plight of African refugee seekers in Israel, who have been called
"infiltrators" by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, has
become a high profile human rights issue for his government, since a
government that views itself as driven by morality - and a refuge for
people fleeing oppression - has used increasingly harsh tactics
against asylum seekers. Senior Israeli officials say most of the
African migrants are seeking economic opportunity, not freedom from
oppression.
`There is no medical care, there is no decent food, and there's
nowhere to go. It's like a prison, but they tell people it's an open
facility,'' said Hassan Shakur, a 27-year old migrant from Sudan who
spoke by telephone from the border area as police surrounded the
protesters.
"This is why we have to move out of Israel and are marching for our freedom."
Shortly after he spoke, an Israeli police officer asked the refugees
to get onto buses and return to Holot, or face mounted police and
water cannon who would force them back. "Let's not clash," said the
officer, according to a video uploaded to Facebook by Israeli
activists.
Threats and punishment
The Africans, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, say they are refugees,
while Prime Minister Netanyahu's government considers them threats to
Israel's national character.
The Holot camp was opened earlier this year and the government calls
it a "residence" for African migrants and says they are allowed to
come and go. However, the facility is located about a one hour drive
from the nearest city, operated by the Israeli prison service, and
inmates are required to be present for three roll calls a day and
sleep at the facility.
The demonstration at the border was the latest in a string of protests
by the Holot inmates against their detention. In recent weeks leaders
of the demonstrations have been transferred to a full-fledged prison
nearby as punishment.
Africans ordered to Holot have said they faced pressure by prison
service employees at Holot to agree to voluntary departure packages,
which consists of several thousand dollar stipends and a free plane
ticket to Uganda or Rwanda. The migrants claim that those who return
to Africa aren't given residency visas in the new country and risk
repatriation to their homelands.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli population authority did not respond to
a call for comment, though in recent months the government has held up
rising numbers of African's accepting the voluntary departure as a
success. The government says migrants basic needs, including food and
housing, are taken care of at Holot.
A report for the Hotline for Migrant Workers on Holot contended that
the conditions at the facility, and the lack of legal recourse to
challenge open-ended detention, put migrants under psychological
stress. The report charges Holot has become a center for the "unjust
imprisonment of those who arrived to Israel seeking to find asylum but
(ended up in) prison instead."
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