The Arab Democrat The Latest From The Arab World
Related Articles
International advocacy group Human Rights Watch published a report on Tuesday suggesting that Israel had illegally coerced around 7,000 African migrants to return to Africa, where some might face prosecution.
“Israel’s convoluted legal rules thwart Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers’ attempts to secure protection under Israeli and international law. Israeli authorities have… denied them access to fair and efficient asylum procedures, and used the resulting insecure legal status as a pretext to unlawfully detain or threaten to detain them indefinitely, coercing thousands into leaving”, the New York-based rights group said in a statement.
Israel has come under criticism from rights groups over its immigration policy and its treatment of African immigrants seeking asylum, particularly at the Holot detention center, where illegal immigrants could be held for up to one year.
“Israeli officials say they want to make the lives of ‘infiltrators’ so miserable that they leave Israel, and then claim people are returning home of their own free will. International law is clear that when Israel threatens Eritreans and Sudanese with lifelong detention, they aren’t freely deciding to leave Israel and risk harm back home”, the report’s creator Gerry Simpson wrote.
Some of the immigrants returning to Sudan have had to deal with “torture, arbitrary detention, and treason charges for setting foot in Israel”, the report said.
Responding to HRW’s report, a spokeswoman for Israel’s population and migration authority fought for its policy, saying that it was “proportionate” and that the number of immigrants leaving voluntarily has tripled since 2013.
“Israel acts legally and in an appropriate and proportional manner in order to deal with the phenomenon of illegal infiltrators. The growth in number of those leaving Israel of their own will is three times higher in 2014 than in 2013. This proves the policy is effective”, she said in a statement.
For the full report click here.
