TORONTO, Canada –“No more prison! We are refugees!” the crowd chanted outside the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem this week, as more than 1,000 African asylum seekers rallied to demand that their asylum requests be fairly heard.

The refugees, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan, have been fighting for years for Israel to ease its harsh restrictions on their daily lives and put an end to indefinite detention and threats of deportation.

“You, the justices of the High Court, are the only ones who have the authority to save Israel from committing the injustice of deporting vulnerable asylum seekers in violation of all international agreements,” March for Freedom, the group that organised the protest this week, said in a statement,according to the Jerusalem Post.

“Our fate is completely in your hands,” the group said.

The protest comes only a few weeks after an Eritrean refugee, who is now living thousands of kilometres away in Canada, began working once more to expose the harsh treatment African asylum seekers are subjected to in Israel.

Dawit Demoz left Israel last March after more than six years in Tel Aviv, where he became a leading activist in the struggle to protect the rights of the country’s marginalised and maligned African asylum seekers.

Now a Canadian permanent resident, the 30-year-old is studying psychology at York University in Toronto and working part-time at a local grocery store.

But he can’t forget the tens of thousands of African asylum seekers still in Israel.

“I can’t just come here, and forget everything I left behind. It’s hard. I think about it all the time,” Demoz told Middle East Eye from a café in Toronto’s west end earlier this month.

“I cannot forget about the people that I left behind. The situation is getting worse there, there’s no hope that the situation in Israel will change. I said to myself, ‘I have to do something.’”

Human rights abuses

The dire living conditions of African asylum seekers in Israel have been widely reported since tens of thousands of mainly Eritrean and Sudanese refugees began making the journey to Israel in the last decade.

More than 40,000 asylum seekerscurrently live in Israel, the vast majority of whom are originally from Eritrea and Sudan. Many refugees reached Israel after a dangerous journey across the Egyptian Sinai desert.

In its history, Israel has recognised less than one percent of all asylum claims. Last year, it granted refugee statusfor the first timeto a Sudanese national, Mutasim Ali, a young activist and protest leader.

For years, the government gave asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan “temporary protection” in the form of short-term visas, which allowed the government to avoid actually processing their asylum claims.

Today, most African asylum seekers must renew temporary visas to remain in the country, and they live under a risk of being summoned to Holot, a detention facility built in the southern Negev desert.

Israel also signed a secretive deal to deport asylum seekers to third countries. The Israeli government says the agreementposes no risk to the deportees; a representative for the Israeli Justice Ministry said last year that at least 3,000 people had been sent to Rwanda and Uganda.

But it’s a policy that refugee advocates say puts the asylum seekers in danger and leaves them in a state of legal limbo. Some asylum seekers have reported being repatriated to their home countries after their deportation from Israel, where they may face imprisonment, torture and other abuses.

‘Expedited’ immigration process

Demoz, who recently organised a film screening and fundraiser in Toronto to benefit the Eritrean Women’s Centre in Tel Aviv, said he is encouraged by Canadians’ desire to help Eritreans.

The first goal of the event was to raise awareness, and provide information for how Eritreans can be sponsored to come to Canada, he said.

“I want you to know about the situation of Eritreans, but at the same time, there are things that you can do now. If you are ready or if you’re interested to help, you can sponsor Eritreans,” said Demoz, who was privately sponsored by a Canadian group.

Canada’s unique private sponsorship programme allows community groups (known as private sponsorship agreement holders) to sponsor individuals in need of resettlement. These groups are then financially responsible for the refugees’ first year in Canada.

"If you are ready or if you’re interested to help, you can sponsor Eritreans” - Dawit Demoz

Officially, the Refugee Protection Division within the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada is tasked with holding hearings andinvestigating claims for refugee protectionmade in the country.

It recently gave Eritreans access to an “expedited process” to make their claims. Syrian and Iraqi nationals are the only others to have access to this process in Canada.

This means that the IRB has recognised a “pattern of human rights abuses” and can grant refugee status to individuals from these countries more quickly, said Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees.

“An expedited process is good for them to try to move [through] obvious claims quickly,” Dench told Middle East Eye. “From the claimants’ point of view, it can [mean] you are saved what can be a very traumatising hearing process. It makes it an easier and friendlier and potentially a slightly faster process.”

Between January and August last year, 3,081 Eritreans received permanent residency in Canada: 2,773 were privately-sponsored refugees, while the remaining 308 people were sponsored by the government. That’s an increase from 2015, during which 1,648 Eritreans received Canadian permanent residency.

But Dench said Canada should also put a suspension of removals in place for Eritrean nationals, given the dire human rights situation in their home country.

In 2015, United Nations said the Eritrean government was responsible for “systemic, widespread and gross human rights violations” that may amount to crimes against humanity.

Eritreans are forced into indefinite conscription, where they are subjected to hard labour, torture, physical and sexual abuse. Dissent is stifled, imprisonment and enforced disappearances are widespread, and hundreds of thousands have fled the country.

“It is not law that rules Eritreans – but fear,”the UN reported.

Having a clear policy that blocks deportations to Eritrea would allow the refugees to get work permits and be in a better position than simply waiting for Ottawa to deport them.

“It’s well established that there are massive human rights abuses going on, and yet there is very little international coverage of it,” Dench said. “I think that’s one of the reasons why we don’t have a temporary suspension. If people have been paying more attention, it would have been in place long ago.”

Can Canada help Eritreans in Israel?

Individuals cannot apply directly for resettlement in Canada, but they must instead be referred, either by the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR) or other organisation, or a private sponsor, explained Rémi Larivière, a spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

In the case of Eritreans living in Israel, Larivière said Canada has no specific agreement with Israel to resettle them, and the IRCC department has not requested referrals from UNHCR for refugees in Israel.

“However, Canada always remains open to considering urgent or vulnerable cases the UNHCR may identify as being in need of resettlement anywhere in the world,” Larivière said.

Since 2012, Canada has instituted caps on the number of new applications it will accept each year from sponsorship agreement holders.

"Canada always remains open to considering urgent or vulnerable cases" - Rémi Larivière

Last year, a cap of 350 new applications was put in place in Tel Aviv “due to a growing backlog of applications and concerns over long wait times,” he said.

This year, the cap on private sponsorship applications is set at 7,500 people globally, and Canada expects to resettle 40,000 refugees and protected persons.

Larivière added that Canada has committed to welcoming 4,000 government-sponsored Eritrean refugees currently in Sudan and Ethiopia before the end of 2018.

According to Dench, there are political considerations involved in how Canada approaches the possible resettlement of Eritreans currently living in Israel.

“If you resettle somebody out of their country, then you are indirectly acknowledging that the country is not providing appropriate protection and a durable solution to the refugees that are there, and a country like Israel might not take well to that,” she said.

Meanwhile, Demoz said that his new life in Canada has showed him just how unjust the situation in Israel really is.

“Canada is a country of immigrants and both the Canadian government and the Canadian public see this as an asset… They say diversity is our strength,” he said.

“In Israel, it’s completely different. [They say], ‘You’re not part of us; you’re a different colour, you’re a different ethnicity, you’re a different culture so you’re not part of us. We don’t want you.’

Source=http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/refugee-pushes-canada-help-asylum-seekers-israel-821337504

Hundreds of African refugees have held a protest rally in front of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) to voice their anger at the Tel Aviv regime’s policy of mass detention and deportation against them.

Israeli media reported that some 1,000 protesters, mostly Eritreans and Sudanese, gathered outside the legislature as well as the Supreme Court in Jerusalem al-Quds on Thursday.

Some were holding up banners reading, “Black lives matter,” and “Don’t force us to leave and look for refuge elsewhere.” Others were carrying pictures of the refugees, who had been deported.

More than 10,000 African asylum seekers, mainly Sudanese and Eritreans, have been held at the Holot detention facility in the Negev, with officials there allowed to keep them for a maximum of 12 months.

Tel Aviv has sought to strike deals with other African nations to take in some of the African refugees.

However, the organizers of the Thursday march say asylum seekers who have been deported to third-party African states face the risk of being repatriated back to their homeland.

In a letter addressed to the Supreme Court justices, the organizers of the march denounced the deportation policy as “coercive”, saying, “This policy is cruel, illegal and unacceptable. We should not be imprisoned or thrown to other countries in Africa that are not ours and don’t accept us.”

Less than one percent of the asylum seekers have had their pleas recognized by the Israeli authorities since the regime signed the UN Refugee Convention around six decades ago.

African asylum seekers, mostly from Eritrea, hold up placards showing migrants whom they say were killed after being deported from Israel during a protest in Jerusalem al-Quds, January 26, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

During the march, Tekle Negash, a 21-year-old Eritrean refugee who came alone to Israel in 2012, said he has been kept in Holot for the past three months under “horrid” conditions.

“It’s very crowded, and there is only one shower and one toilet for us,” he said. “The food there is very bad, and in the summer it’s very hot, and in the winter it’s very cold. We can leave for 12 hours, but we are not allowed to work.”

Media reports in the past years have suggested that a number of African states have reached secret agreements with Tel Aviv, in which they accept unwanted refugees in return for arms, military training and other aid from Israel.

Read more

• African asylum seekers in Israel

• What is Netanyahu doing in Africa?

Last July, Benjamin Netanyahu went on a four-nation tour of sub-Saharan Africa, the first such visit by an Israeli prime minister to the continent in almost 30 years.

During the visit, Netanyahu reportedly discussed the eviction of thousands of migrants and refugees from Sudan and Eritrea who entered Israel through Egypt.

In 2015, The Washington Post reported that Israel had spent more than USD 350 million to build a fence along its entire border with Egypt to block the entry of Africans.

There are some 45,000 African asylum seekers in Israel. Ninety-two percent of those are from Eritrea and Sudan. 

Source=http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/01/27/507939/Israel-Knesset-Jerusalem-Eritrea-Sudan

Refugees from Eritrea and other countries wait to be rescued from the Mediterranean Sea, north of Libya. Photograph: Santi Palacios/AP

 Documents cited in the Guardian on Monday showing that the UK governmentdownplayed the risk of human rights abuses in Eritreain an attempt to reduce asylum-seeker numbers are the latest indication of Britain’s determination to reduce African immigration. But this is a Europe-wide initiative, co-ordinated in Brussels.

WithFrench, German, Dutch and Italian elections later this year, there is intense pressure across the European Union to cut the flows of refugees and migrants across the Mediterranean. European plans to deal with the question have been veiled in secrecy, since they involve close cooperation with some of Africa’s most notorious dictatorships.

The German magazine Der Spiegel revealed a warning from the European commission that “under no circumstances” should the public learn what was said during talks held in March last year. A member of staff working forFederica Mogherini, the EU high representative for foreign affairs, warned of the risk to Europe’s reputation.

Plans are being formulated under arrangements agreed between theEU and African leaders in Maltain November 2015. These called for close cooperation between European security services and those of African states. Among those around the table at Valletta were representatives of repressive regimes in Sudan (whose president,Omar al-Bashir, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes) and Eritrea, which has been accused of crimes against humanity.

The Sudanese President, Omar al-Bashir, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Photograph: Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images

European civil servants are fully aware of just how dangerous these proposals are, and the document includes in a list of risks the possibility that resources and equipment could be diverted “for repressive aims”.

The Sudanese authorities have already begun what is technically termedrefoulementof Eritreans – the forcible return of asylum seekers to a country where they are liable to be subjected to persecution. In May last year hundreds were arrested in Khartoum and returned to Eritrea.

Eritrean human rights organisations suggest this process has continued.Refugeesin the Sudanese capital are fearful of leaving their homes, afraid they will be picked up by the authorities.

In Europe, these efforts are paying off: the number of people arriving from Africa is falling. The latest statistics fromFrontex– the EU-wide border agency – show that two routes have almost been sealed. There is next to no transit by sea from west Africa through the Canary Islands, and only a limited number of people arriving in Spain via the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. A total of 2,162 Africans made it to Spain in the second quarter of 2016.

The second route, via the Sinai and Israel, has effectively ended. A hi-tech system of fences and detection devices, constructed by Israel in December 2013, sealed the border.

Read more

This leaves available to Africans just the central Mediterranean route through Libya and, to a lesser extent, Egypt. It was used by 51,450 people in the second quarter of 2016. But the EU is now attempting to cut this final route intoEurope. Earlier this month Italy’s interior minister, Marco Minniti, was dispatched to Tripoli to broker an agreement with Fayez al-Sarraj, head of Libya’s UN-backed government of national accord, on fighting irregular migration through the country.

Minniti and Sarraj agreed to reinforce cooperation on security, the fight against terrorism and human trafficking. “There is a new impulse here — we are moving as pioneers,” Mario Giro, Italy’s deputy foreign minister, told the Financial Times. “But there is a lot of work to do, becauseLibyastill doesn’t yet have the capacity to manage the flows, and the country is still divided.”

Such initiatives are developing rapidly, with civil servants using aid and security co-operation to crack down on this African exodus. And while we can all recognise the domestic, political pressures that EU governments face, and which are leading them to seek to halt the flow of migrants across their borders, we must also recognise that those affected are some of the most vulnerable people from some of the most repressive countries in Africa. There must be a legal route for refugees to escape persecution.

Source=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/26/europe-crackdown-africa-immigration-vulnerable-refugees-sudan-eritrea