Israel passes 'harsh' immigration law

Photo by runran

By Paul Canning

A law which could lead to the indefinite detention of asylum seekers has been passed by the Israeli parliament.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voted for the bill, which his spokesman called part of a “multitiered strategy to deal with the challenge of illegal immigration to Israel.”

The bill has been sharply criticized by refugee advocates, and is seen as targeting some 50,000 Africans who have entered Israel illegally since 2005, according to Israeli government estimates.

And in a country built by refugees it has caused soul-searching with the conservative Jerusalem Post in a November 11 Editorial saying:

Now with a sovereign country of its own the Jewish people must not only serve as a moral example of how developed countries should deal with refugees and asylum-seekers, but also make sure that a strong Jewish majority is maintained in a sovereign Jewish state.

The law is the first one dealing with refugees - until now they have been managed under an emergency law from 1954.

The amended law will enable the Israeli authorities to hold in administrative detention for up to three years migrant workers and asylum seekers with their children. This is not unusual, although harsh. Australia, for example, also holds asylum seekers in detention for long periods although it is retreating from that policy because of the growing evidence that it produces serious mental harm. Contrary to that trend, the Israeli law's proponents argued that long detention periods would deter refugees.

Anyone who is fleeing from a so-called “enemy” country can be held indefinitely. This can mean those refugees and their children fleeing genocide from the Darfur region of Sudan or gays fleeing Iraq. The law stipulates that persons originating from such countries or areas are not to be bailed from detention under any conditions.

Any refugee or migrant committing the most minor infraction of Israeli law could be jailed from three years to life.

"This is extremely irregular, because in Israel today it is legally impossible to keep a person in custody for years without putting him on trial and proving his guilt in a legal procedure," Knesset legal advisor Eyal Yinon told the Constitution Committee last month.

The law will criminalize what it calls ‘irregular entry’ and makes no provision for those fleeing persecution.

It creates a summary removal procedure — within 72 hours — without giving the individual an adequate opportunity to challenge their deportation. There is no distinction made for how children will be treated.

The Justice Ministry had proposed that those aiding refugees could be criminally prosecuted - providing them with shelter could mean a prison sentence of between five and 15 years. That provision was amended at the last moment, so it no longer applies to organizations or people who provide humanitarian aid.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) has called the law:

“one of the most dangerous bills ever presented in the Knesset.”

Israeli activist Elizabeth Tsurkov wrote that:

The law is designed to target the weakest of the groups living in Israel – survivors of genocide, civil war, prolonged servitude, torture and rape – by using a law originally intended to combat armed saboteurs. Past attempts to pass this law (which was first drafted in 2006) were foiled due to a harsh public response. However, following years of systematic incitement against refugees by Israel government officials, the Israeli public now largely sees refugees as illegal migrants, undeserving of sympathy, and as a result, this inhumane law has now become reality.

The
 Hebrew
 Immigrant
 Aid
 Society,
 a
 critical
 contributor
 to
 training
 and 
monitoring
 the 
Israeli 
immigration
 system,
 recently withdrew its
 presence
 in
 Israel
 in
 protest
 of
 Israeli
 treatment
 of
 asylum
 seekers.
 The 
US
 Department
 of
 State
 has
 echoed 
criticism
 of 
Israeli 
treatment
 of 
asylum
 seekers, 
condemning 
a lack
 of 
legal 
representation, 
lack
 of
 interpretation,
 in
judicial hearings 
and 
extended 
detention.

The Africans reaching Israel face appalling conditions on the way with NGO EveryOne Group reporting only yesterday about 44 more Eritreans kidnapped for ransom in the Northern Sinai, including six children. They also reported that another African released by traffickers had then been tortured and shot in the leg by Egyptian police.

There have also been multiple, grisly reports of migrants in Egypt being targeted for body parts.

Related articles

• Israel proposing indefinite detention of refugees (madikazemi.blogspot.com) 
• Video: The law that crosses the line (madikazemi.blogspot.com)

Migrants in Egypt targeted for body parts

By Paul Canning

People fleeing persecution in countries like Eritrea are being killed in Egypt for their body parts.

According to a doctor in a town on the Sudan-Egypt border quoted by South Africa's Weekend Argus newspaper, a number of “disemboweled bodies” have been discovered. Organs, especially kidneys, were missing.

A recent car crash in Sinai provided evidence. The doctor who was driving the car was killed and, inside the vehicle, officials discovered a small refrigerator containing several human organs. There is other evidence including photographs from a morgue in the Egyptian port town of al-Arish showing scars in the abdomens of refugees who did not make it.

At least 27 refugees have alleged that Egyptian Bedouin people-smugglers have threatened to steal their organs unless they or their families paid money, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) Israel says.

The Egyptian authorities are known for ignoring the treatment of migrants by traffickers and others, or, in the case of those trying for the Israeli border, actually shooting to kill. They deny the evidence of any trade in body parts.

Italian-based Eritrean agency Agenzia Habeshia provided evidence of some 300 Eritreans and Ethiopians who are being held in police stations in Aswan in Southern Egypt and in the military camp of Shelal in “inhuman and degrading conditions”.

The inter-governmental organisation International Organisation for Migrants (IOM) has listed the situation in Aswan as “very serious”.

Beatings are a regular feature of detention and political and religious refugees in particular are subjected to torture to make them sign “voluntary repatriation requests”.

IOM say that last week more than 100 Christian Eritreans who suffer religious persecution and fear for their lives in Eritrea, were beaten repeatedly until they signed.

“Refugees and asylum-seekers returned to Eritrea have been detained incommunicado and tortured upon return,” Amnesty International said. They have accused the Egyptians of denying refugees access to UNHCR.

The situation in camps run by traffickers is worse, with slavery well documented aside from the alleged, lucrative body parts trade. In the Sinai, criminals hold hostage, kill, torture, and rape migrants.

PHR Israel earlier this year published a survey based on interviews with 284 asylum seekers who made it to Israel. Some 44 per cent said they witnessed violence and/or fatalities of other asylum seekers while they were in the Sinai and the vast majority (88 per cent) stated they experienced severe hunger and food deprivation.

Many women have asked for abortions after being raped.

A leader from the largest Bedouin tribe told CNN said he was aware that rogue elements of his tribe are engaged in people trafficking, bonded labor and torture.

Several hundred Eritreans were recently released from hostage by local Bedouin police working with an NGO coalition. But authorities have been slow to act, if at all, despite being given details about individual criminals.

Related articles

• Israel proposing indefinite detention of refugees (madikazemi.blogspot.com)
• Scores freed after CNN documentary (thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com)

In Israel, asylum seekers building fence to keep out other asylum seekers

Source: Haaretz

The government is employing Eritrean asylum seekers to help build a border fence designed to keep out other migrants seeking to enter the country from Africa via the Sinai Peninsula.

A man who gave his name as August, one of four Eritreans working for a contractor along the fence route, said he had sought work for a long time before he was told a construction job was available near Eilat.   

He had arrived in Israel five months ago. According to August, the hardest part of the journey was trekking through the African desert. Now, once the border fence along the Egyptian frontier is completed, migrants will find it even more difficult to enter the country.

August laughed when asked if he felt guilty that he was helping put up a structure designed to keep fellow Eritreans out of the country. "I have a family that remained in Eritrea," he said. "While they would love to come here, they know the journey isn't easy." As August tells it, he simply has no choice but to earn a living any way he can.

While the state has legally barred its citizens from employing asylum seekers from Africa, it doesn't enforce the ban. Months ago, the Interior Ministry's Population Registry inserted a clause in the temporary-status visas given to asylum seekers stating that under no circumstances could they be hired.

Read more »

In Israel, a border wall to stop African refugees

Source: IRIN

Israel is building a 60km-long barrier on its southern border with Egypt aimed at physically keeping out African asylum-seekers amid a rising tide of intolerance towards people widely referred to as “illegal workers".

The barrier will be built at two locations which witness the most crossings - near the Gaza strip and near Eilat. The estimated US$1.35 billion project is due to be completed at the end of 2013.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted in July as saying that the "flood of illegal workers infiltrating from Africa" into Israel was "a concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country".

Local news channel Ynet recently reported that Netanyahu was also considering paying African countries willing to take in Israel’s asylum-seekers.

Israel immigration authorities estimate 10,000 asylum-seekers have crossed the border so far this year, bringing the total number in the country to some 30,000. This represents a sharp rise on the 1,100 estimated to have crossed in 2006, despite the perils of the journey, which include Egyptian border guards that shoot on sight.

Read more »

Israeli policy on refugees comes under scrutiny in award-winning documentary

Source: Haaretz

By Riva Gold

“The issue of refugees is not foreign to us; not to Jews, and not to the State of Israel,” says award-winning filmmaker Shai Carmeli-Polak. Shai’s documentary, “Ha'plitim,” (The refugees) seeks to expose the moral and legal questions underlying refugee status in Israel.

The film follows African asylum-seekers as they cross the Egypt-Israel border to escape life-threatening conditions, and won the Bronze Olive Award at the Montenegro International TV Festival in 2009. Shai captures their arrival and detention in Israel, interspersed with scenes of parliamentary debates surrounding Israel's policies on refugees.

The film's release started with a few 2009 screenings in other countries, but is now on a tour across Israel, accompanied by talks from Carmeli-Polak. The film recently had a screening party in its honor at the African Refugee Development Center in Tel Aviv.

While Israel is party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the government has not yet adopted asylum legislation. An approximate 17,000 asylum-seekers have fled to Israel from Sudan, Eritrea, Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Ivory Coast. Many have been detained in prison camps and over 270 have been returned to Egypt.

“It’s a humanitarian crisis,” says Carmeli-Polak, who became an activist for the refugee community in 2007. “People are arriving from war-torn countries, and the government wants to just give them food and send them back.”

Read more »

Why Israel needs a refugee status determination process

Image via Wikipedia

Source: Jerusalem Post

By Mollie Gerver

The lack of a working, objective policy to absorb asylum seekers has led to the mistaken overuse of ‘migrant worker’ to classify those who flee persecution in their countries.

Three thousand years ago the Jewish people introduced a revolutionary idea: provide refuge to those escaping slavery and give the former slaves almost full residency rights in the land of Israel (Deuteronomy 23:16-17).

“Infiltrators” and “migrant workers” are terms used today by government officials, policy-makers and the media to describe former slaves and victims of genocide who are crossing our border. These terms are the reason that hundreds have been forcibly returned by the IDF to the Egyptian border patrol that kills or imprisons them. Out of the approximately 25,000 African asylum seekers who have made it here alive since 2007, only around 600 have been granted temporary residency, and far fewer received refugee status, which would protect them from arbitrary deportation and allow them to apply for resettlement in other countries.

How do we know if the Africans who cross our borders are genuine refugees who have fled persecution? First, refugees are willing to knowingly risk their lives to make it here, suggesting their lives are at risk in the countries they are fleeing. Based on different AP reports of African asylum seekers killed by the Egyptian border patrol, at least one out every 200 who attempts to cross the border is killed. This statistic ignores the hundreds more who AP doesn’t find out about. Women are told they may be raped by the Beduins who help them make the journey, but are still willing to risk it. They take birth control pills to, at the very least, avoid forced impregnation – evidence that whatever they face at home is worse than the prospect of likely rape.

Read more »

Egypt has become a human prison for African migrants.

Source: Ethiopian Journal

By solomon

They are hung from trees by metal chains attached to their arms and provided with plastic bags to collect their urine to drink when they are thirsty. They are gang raped, tortured with electricity and held prisoner in desert camps. When they escape they are shot, either by their Beduin captors or by Egyptian police. These savage and disturbing details, published piecemeal over the years, are just a part of the picture of what is being done in Egypt’s Sinai desert to African migrants.

The story probably begins with the end of the Ethiopia-Eritrea War in 2000, the beginning of the Darfur genocide in 2003 and the end of the war in South Sudan in 2005, each of which in its own way created numerous refugees. In December 2005, Egypt began cracking down on African migrants, in one infamous incident many (between 10 and 60) were massacred by police attempting to clear a park of their encampments.

This helped provide incentive to travel further afield, with Europe a tough destination, they trickled into Sinai and thence to Israel. Eritreans, who now make up the majority of refugees (10,000+), have been arriving in Israel since 2007. In that year it was reported that 48 African refugees deported to Egypt by Israel had been abused and then disappeared. One migrant claimed Egyptians imprisoned him and “poured boiling water on his body.”

Read more »

Audio: Living in Limbo

Source: BBC World Service

No-one in the UK is more marginalised than those asylum seekers who have not had their applications accepted but have not yet been asked to leave.This status might occur because their country of origin is too dangerous to return to and is a life in limbo that can last as long as eight years.

Failed asylum seekers have no rights to benefits, accommodation or work. They exist on the goodwill of others.

Collen thinks that his four years of asylum claims and appeals may be at an end, but is too frightened to return to Zimbabwe.

Thomas - from Eritrea - does not yet know if he can stay in the UK after originally claiming asylum seven years ago.

Jenny Cuffe investigates the impact of living in limbo on the lives of asylum seekers.

Living in Limbo is the second in this year's Global Perspective documentary series.

First broadcast on BBC World Service 30 April 2010.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Chance brings refugees to Britain not choice, says report (guardian.co.uk)

Eritrea questioned over anti-gay laws

Image by erjkprunczyk via Flickr

Source: Secondo Protocollo United Kingdom

Eritrean government officials for the first time have answered to rights activists’ questions about the country’s tough anti-homosexuality laws. Legalisation was out of question, the official said.

At a recent UN review of the human rights situation in Eritrea, Rowland Jide Macaulay of the Canadian HIV AIDS Legal Network challenged the Eritrean government to “repeal all legislative provisions which criminalise sexual activity between consenting adults of the same sex.”

According to the Canadian rights activist, the criminalisation of consensual homosexual acts was a threat to public health as it “frustrated creating access to HIV prevention and awareness programmes for men who had sex with men.” Moreover, it was contrary to international law, human rights and “likely to exacerbate incidents of harassment, abuse, arbitrary arrests and unlawful detentions.”

Girmai Abraham of the Eritrean Ministry of National Development was confronted with many demands at the human rights hearing, including bids to abolish death penalty, stopping the practice of torture and adhering to press freedom. Consulting with government in Asmara, he came up with a list of which demands Eritrea would listen to and which it would reject.

According to Mr Abraham, the Eritrean government rejected the demand to legalise same-sex activity between consenting adults, which was “in direct contradiction with the values and traditions of the Eritrean people.”

Homosexuality is illegal in Eritrea, according to the 1957 penal code, which is an inheritance from colonial times. The penal code strictly prohibits “sexual deviations,” among which is performing sexual acts with someone of the same sex. So-called “unnatural carnal offences” can be punished with imprisonment of between 10 days and 3 years.

Little is known about the practical use of this law as the state-controlled Eritrean press does not report about homosexuality at all. But according to a report from the British Embassy in Asmara, people who participate in “such an act are prosecuted and punished whenever found guilty.” In 2004, authorities reportedly expelled a number of foreigners from Eritrea on the basis of their sexual orientation.

Mr Macaulay, content for having been given an official answer on the legality of homosexuality in Eritrea, has decided to go further with his campaigning. In a letter to Eritrean President Issaias Afewerki, the Canadian asks him to reconsider his position, “appreciating the sensitivity of the issue.”

In general terms, homosexuality is not a publicly discussed issue in Eritrea. The existance of sexual minorities, in the modern sense, is not known to Eritreans at large, but law enforcers have become increasingly aware of homosexuality in their efforts to fight it.