Human Rights Watch and the Hotline for Migrant Workers released a report on
Wednesday stating that Israel is threatening detained Eritrean and Sudanese
nationals, including asylum-seekers, with prolonged detention to pressure them
to leave Israel.
The report said that since December 11, 2012, “Israel’s
pressure has convinced several hundred detained Sudanese and one Eritrean to
leave Israel, and in February 2013, some 50 detained Eritreans agreed under
similar pressure to leave for Uganda.”
According to the report, all 50 of
the detained Eritreans remain in detention.
HRW and the Hotline for
Migrant Workers said that Sudanese and Eritreans face a real risk of harm if
they return to their home countries.
The report said that under Sudanese
law, anyone who has visited Israel faces up to 10 years in prison in Sudan and
Sudanese officials have said the courts will apply the law.
Next, the
report stated that because of “credible persecution fears relating to punishment
for evading indefinite military service in Eritrea, 80 percent of Eritrean
asylumseekers worldwide are granted some form of protection.”
“Israel’s
prolonged detention of asylum-seekers apparently aims to shatter all hope so
they feel they have no real choice but to leave the country,” said Gerry
Simpson, senior refugee researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“Instead of
browbeating some of the world’s most abused and vulnerable people into giving up
their rights and putting themselves at grave risk, Israel should release asylum-
seekers while their claims are examined and protect anyone found to risk serious
harm if returned.”
The report claimed that if Israel returned anyone to a
place where the person’s life or freedom would be threatened, “such return would
violate international law’s prohibition on refoulement – forced return to a
serious risk of persecution.”
The scope of the constitutional rights of
the migrants and Israel’s policy of detaining up to 2,000 migrants at Saharonim
detention center in the South is currently before the High Court of
Justice.
On Tuesday, the High Court issued a conditional order against
Israel’s policy of detaining certain migrants at Saharonim, demanding that the
state explain how the policy does not violate international law obligations and
migrants’ constitutional rights.
However, conditional orders often do not
lead to “victory” on a final ruling and the court gave the state at least until
April 30 to respond, signaling that the court does not view the issue as an
emergency to the same extent as migrant rights advocates.
Frequently, the
court’s granting such a long delay also is a signal that the court will approve
state policy if some slight changes are made to address some of the objections
brought by a petitioner.
NGO Monitor’s legal adviser Anne Herzberg
criticized the report for failing to “wrestle with some of the complicated,
sensitive and important issues” regarding the situation.
She said that
“not everyone who comes across the border is defined by international law as a
‘refugee,’” but said that “Human Rights Watch is not interested in faithfulness
to the law.”
Part of the basis that advocates of the new detention policy
have been pushing is that Israel does not force any migrant to return to their
country of origin – arguing that any “returned” migrants are doing so
voluntarily.
However, the report said that Israel would also be violating
the refoulement prohibition if a person “chose” to return after Israeli
authorities had threatened prolonged or indefinite detention as the only
alternative.
Herzberg said that Israel is not the only country dealing
with the complicated question of how many refugees to absorb and how many not
to, noting that the US and Europe are dealing with the same
problem.
While she recognized that anyone who received the status
determination of “refugee” and anyone who would be “persecuted” if they were
“returned” cannot be sent back to their country of origin, she said that there
is also a large group of migrants who came to Israel merely for economic
reasons.
HRW noted that there is an extreme lag time in Israel’s
reviewing migrants status to determine if they are refugees.
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