Israel: Asylum Seekers Blocked at Border - part 2 | WPN World People News

Recent Cases Involving Israel Blocking or Deporting Eritrean and Other Asylum Seekers

According to various sources, on at least seven occasions since June, Israel has prevented dozens of Eritrean asylum seekers from seeking asylum in Israel on the Egypt-Israel border. In July, Israel also unlawfully deported around 40 Eritreans from Israel to Egypt.

Pushback Case 1
In October, the two Israeli nongovernmental organizations – the Hotline for Migrant Workers and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel – spoke to an Eritrean asylum seeker whom Israeli border guards had allowed to enter Israel because of his apparent ill-health. He said that although the guards had allowed him and another Eritrean man to cross, they had prevented four other Eritrean men and two Eritrean women from entering Israel. He said that before they had reached the Israel border, traffickers had held all eight of them – together with many other sub-Saharan Africans – for ransom in the Sinai before finally taking them to the Israeli border.

The man gave a detailed account of abuses he and others had faced at the hands of the traffickers. He spoke of the screams of women whom the traffickers beat while the women called their relatives on phones to plead with them to pay the traffickers a ransom to secure their release, of how men detained in other rooms said that the bodies of detainees who had died chained to each other were not removed for days, and of how traffickers forced him and other men to build rooms at their detention site.

The three rights groups were unable to verify independently whether the six Eritreans had been denied entry into Israel. However, Meron Estefanos, an Eritrean journalist and activist living in Sweden, spoke with Human Rights Watch and said she received a phone call on October 15 from the sister of one of the Eritrean men who had been denied entry to Israel. The woman said she had spoken with her brother, who was detained in an Egyptian prison. She said that during the call, an Arabic-speaking man had taken the phone from her brother and told her that if her family paid a fine, her brother would be released and be allowed to travel to Ethiopia.

Pushback Case 2
Two Eritrean women and a 14-year-old boy who were allowed to cross into Israel and who spoke with Israeli rights groups said that between August 28 and September 6, Israeli soldiers stationed at the border fence prevented them and 18 Eritrean men from entering Israel. One of the women said Israeli soldiers fired shots in the air when they first arrived at the fence and “twice threw [tear]gas at us and pushed a long metal pole through the fence to try and get us to move away.” The second woman said soldiers used teargas when members of the group tried to break through the fence.

The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported that on September 11 an Israeli rights group, We Are Refugees, filed a complaint with Israel’s high court on behalf of the two women and the boy, who submitted affidavits stating that Israeli forces had used teargas and violence to force the other 18 people in their group away from the fence.

Israeli aid groups also said Israeli soldiers stopped them from helping the group. The two women and boy said that on September 6, the soldiers cut a hole in the Israeli border fence and allowed them to cross, but forced the 18 men to pass back through a second fence on the Egyptian side of the border on the other side of which they could see Egyptian soldiers.

Pushback Case 3
In a similar case, the Israeli daily newspaperYedioth Aharonothreportedon September 6 that for six days in August, Israeli forces prevented a group of about 20 Eritreans and Sudanese migrants from crossing the border fence. The article included an account from an Israeli soldier, who said his unit was ordered not give the group any food and to use teargas and stun grenades to force them away from the fence. On the following day, the paper reported that Israeli forces had received orders to prevent migrants from crossing the fence and to give them only bread and a small amount of water.

Pushback Cases 4 – 6
An Israeli soldier’s affidavit given to Anat Ben-Dor, the refugee lawyer at Tel Aviv University, said that in June Israeli forces detained at least three groups of sub-Saharan Africans at the border and forcibly handed them over to Egyptian forces without allowing them to claim asylum.

Pushback Case 7
The medical group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has said that in August Israeli forces refused to allow a group of Eritreans to cross for four days. The group, whose size was not clear, was forced to remain for four days in an area near the border fence. An anonymous witness told the group by phone that Egyptian forces were guarding the Egyptian end of the area. The Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson’s office confirmed to Haaretz on August 10 that, “The IDF is operating in conjunction with Egyptian forces to extract the foreigners” from the area. Israeli forces eventually allowed the Eritreans to cross. They are now detained in the Saharonim detention facility in Israel’s Negev desert, near the border.

Possible Pushback Case 8
In another case involving possible unlawful blocking of entry, Israeli refugee rights groups reported on September 9 that Israeli forces had prevented a group of 11 Africans, including a pregnant woman, from crossing the border for three days. The rights groups have been unable to determine whether any members of the group were allowed to enter.

Unlawful Deportation Case
According to Estefanos, the Swedish-Eritrean journalist, on July 19 Israeli forces detained and unlawfully returned to Egypt a group of about 40 Eritrean asylum seekers, including a pregnant woman. Estefanos interviewed two of the returned men by phone on August 2 while they were in Egyptian detention.

The men said that when the group – which included people who had been beaten by traffickers –reached the Israeli border, Amharic and Arabic speaking Israelis soldiers said, “Welcome to Israel.” They told some of the group to get into a military truck and told the rest to walk along a road under construction next to the border fence on the Israeli side. After a short while, the soldiers told those on the truck to get out and ordered the whole group to cross back into Egypt.

One of the men said that when they refused, the Israeli soldiers contacted the Egyptian army by radio, soon after which four Egyptian soldiers arrived. The other man said he overheard the radio communication and heard the Egyptian soldiers tell the Israeli soldiers to push the group down a steep incline into Egyptian territory. The man said “We refused to get out, and so the [Israeli] soldiers beat us with their hands and gun-butts, and then threw us down [the incline]. Many of us were badly injured [by the Israeli soldiers] and the Egyptians took us straight to prison.”

source: Human Rights Watch