JERUSALEM — Thousands of Sudanese migrants to Israel and hundreds of Eritreans have returned to their home countries this year as a result of an Israeli policy that amounts to “unlawful coercion,” Human Rights Watch said Tuesday. The group said the migrants had been left few other options even though they were at risk of imprisonment or abuse at the hands of repressive governments back home, and despite protections Israel is obligated to provide under international treaties.
The New York-based group said in its report that it had documented seven cases in which citizens of Sudan were detained and interrogated in the capital, Khartoum, on their return.
Israel Prison Service seeking staff for African migrant detention facilities. Construction at Saharonim is slated to be completed by November, at which point two facilities there are expected to hold some 1,200
While four of the seven were released after short periods, the report said, one was tortured, a second was put in solitary confinement and a third was charged with treason for visiting Israel, which does not maintain diplomatic relations with Sudan. The group said that under Sudanese law it is a crime to visit Israel, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and that at least 6,400 Sudanese had returned between January 2013 and the end of June 2014.
The report also said 367 Eritreans had returned home after reaching Israel, but neither Human Rights Watch nor the representative of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees in Israel had any confirmed information about them.
African asylum seekers, including many from Eritrea and Sudan, at a Tel Aviv rally in January
Human Rights Watch said the decision by asylum seekers to leave Israel could not be considered voluntary because of the circumstances surrounding their departures. In many cases, migrants were offered a choice between going home — or in some cases, to a third country — or facing the threat of “indefinite detention” in a semi-open but remote facility in the Negev Desert that does not allow them to work.
“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,” said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher at Human Rights Watch and the author of the report.
Israeli human rights groups have been raising similar concerns in recent months.
Mr. Simpson said it was not possible to determine whether any of the 6,700 migrants had left for other, personal reasons, as they were not interviewed on departure. But he said the more likely explanation was that they were coerced into leaving because of the pressure created by Israel’s policies.
Racist Israeli society rejects African refugees
Israel strongly contested that assessment, saying it encourages repatriation or departure to a third country but does not compel asylum seekers to do so.
“There are very many baseless accusations against the state, just as these organizations criticize every one of the Western countries because of the way they deal with illegal infiltration,” Gideon Saar, Israel’s interior minister, told Israel Radio. “As a country, we first of all act according to the law and with every step we act in consultation with the attorney general and according to his opinion.”
The Interior Ministry said the Human Rights Watch report was an attempt to influence Israel’s Supreme Court, which is expected to rule soon on a petition against a recent amendment to Israel’s law guiding illegal entry to the country.
Israel’s perception of the African migrants, whom it routinely refers to as “infiltrators” or economic migrants, sharply differs from that held by many nongovernmental organizations and refugee advocacy groups, who view them as asylum seekers fleeing conflict zones or persecution.
“Israel does not forcibly deport these people,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister’s office. “They have the possibility to be in Israel safely and to have all their humanitarian needs met.”
Anti-African Racism in Israel
He added, “The overwhelming majority of these people are illegal job seekers and are not coming here for refugee reasons.”
Israeli officials say the government offers refugees willing to leave $3,500.
Walpurga Englbrecht, the representative for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Israel, said Israel might be breaching international conventions that prohibit the forcible return of refugees or asylum seekers to an environment in which they are at risk of persecution or degrading treatment.
The conditions in the Holot facility in the Negev Desert, she added, “restrict the freedom of movement of Eritrean and Sudanese residents to a substantial degree, not necessarily in line with international human rights law.”
Alarmed by an influx of about 60,000 Africans since 2005, the vast majority of them Sudanese or Eritreans who crossed the border from Egypt, and after protests by the residents of south Tel Aviv, where the new arrivals were concentrated, Israel announced in 2012 that it was stepping up efforts to deter, detain and deport the migrants. Measures that include the construction of a steel barrier along Israel’s border with Egypt have since cut the flow of African migrants to almost zero.
Refugees and migrant workers at the Saharonim prison near the border with Egypt
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