T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights and Right Now: Advocates for African Asylum Seekers in Israel today called on the Israeli Government to immediately halt the deportation of detained Eritrean asylum seekers back to Eritrea. According to detainees in the Saharonim internment camp for asylum seekers, 14 Eritreans who spent the last year in Saharonim prison were returned to Asmara, Eritrea on July 14. The Israeli government is putting these Eritreans at risk of arrest, torture and mortal danger along with endangering the lives of many other detained Eritreans who have been designated for repatriation.
According the U.S. State Department’s 2012 Report on Human Rights in Eritrea, “the government of Eritrea is an authoritarian regime” whose abuses include “arbitrary arrest and detention, including of national service evaders.”
“If these people are returned, their lives will be at risk,” said Maya Paley, Co-Founder of Right Now: Advocates for African Asylum Seekers in Israel. “We are deeply concerned that Israeli authorities are failing to acknowledge the serious threat to the asylum seekers’ lives and neglecting to process their asylum claims responsibly, transparently or fairly. We believe it is unconscionable to treat those who have fled from an oppressive and tyrannical regime this way.”
More than 1,000 Eritreans have been imprisoned for over a year at the Saharonim detention facility and other internment camps in the Negev desert. Reports from inside the prison indicate that every few days, immigration officers inform the Eritreans that their only way out of prison is to go back to their homeland.
“Israeli authorities claim that those who have already been deported and those who are registered to return have expressed a desire to do so and completed the new Voluntary Return Procedure authorized by the Attorney General. However, the way these asylum seekers have been treated flies in the face of any common sense definition of ‘voluntary return,’” said Paley.
“As American Jews, we believe that such treatment of a disenfranchised minority challenges our legacy of fighting alongside other minorities for civil rights. As concerned members of the American Jewish community, we ask Israel to fulfill its legal obligations and stop returning refugees to dangerous situations without allowing them to have their legal claim for asylum heard and evaluated,” said Stephen Slater, Co-Founder of Right Now: Advocates for African Asylum Seekers in Israel.
Poor prison conditions likely fuel asylum seekers’ decision to accept deportation. Asylum seekers in Israel are kept in harsh desert conditions in the Israeli Negev, each of them given only 22.6 square feet of space on average, compared to the Western average of 94.7 square feet of space per inmate.
“We urge the government of Israel to implement a fair and efficient asylum system.” said Joshua Bloom, T’ruah’s Director of Israel Programs. “The deportation of Eritrean asylum seekers demonstrates a failure to follow the Jewish imperative to protect and care for the stranger who seek refuge among us per the biblical command, ‘You shall not wrong a stranger; neither shall you oppress him; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.’”
