Israel to expel African asylum seekers to other countries

Israel announced Tuesday it will begin to deport asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan to unnamed third countries, even without their consent.

Israeli human rights organizations said the third countries are presumably Uganda and Rwanda.

The Ministry of Interior said in a statement that the new measure will be implemented in the next few days.

Until now, Israel pressured asylum seekers and offered them cash grants to "voluntary leave" the country, but only if they signed a written declaration stating their willingness to do so.

Under the new measure, asylum seekers will be ordered to leave in 30 days. Israel will give them a departure grant and a free one-way ticket.

Those who refuse might face an indefinite detention in Saharonim, a detention facility for asylum seekers in southern Israel.

Minister of Interior, Gilad Erdan, said that "the move will encourage infiltrators to leave Israel in a safe and honorable way, and will effectively fulfill our duty toward the citizens of Israel and residents of south Tel Aviv, who will be able to return the fabric of life they were used to."

But a coalition of six human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, said that the expulsion of asylum seekers to other countries without agreements and detailed commitments that ensure their protection "is illegal."

"The testimonies we and others have collected thus far prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Uganda and Rwanda are not safe countries," the coalition said in a statement sent to Xinhua.

"The documents and money of asylum seekers who arrive from Israel is taken from them upon landing, they are not granted any legal status or formal protection from deportation, and because asylum seekers cannot settle there, the deportees are forced to keep searching for refuge in other places, exposed to abuse and exploitation," the statement read.

Under the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention, to which Israel is a signatory, asylum seekers are entitled to a collective protection in Israel since sending them back to their home countries could endanger their lives.

Around 47,000 asylum seekers live in Israel. Most of them fled Sudan's genocide and ethnic cleansing or the harsh dictatorship of Eritrea. Many of them live in the impoverished neighborhoods of southern Tel Aviv.

Israeli authorities see them as a threat to Israel's Jewish identity, and has employed many measures against them. In 2013, it constructed a fence along the Egypt-Israel border, which effectively halts the entering of new asylum seekers, and last year the government passed a law to allow their detention for indefinite period of time in Saharonim.

Since the beginning of 2014, about 1,500 asylum seekers left with consent to a third country, in addition to more than 7,000 who went back to their country of origin, according to figures by the Ministry of Interior.
  Xinhua
globaltimes.cn
1/4/15
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related 2013:

• Israel says it won’t forcibly deport illegal African migrants, but it wants them to leave