African asylum seekers and Israeli human rights groups on Wednesday petitioned a Jerusalem court to prohibit Interior Minister Eli Yishai from rounding up and jailing Sudanese citizens residing in Israel, as he had vowed to do after the Jewish holidays. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and five other human rights groups filed a petition in the Jerusalem District Court on behalf of six asylum seekers seeking an injunction to prevent racist Interior Minister Yishai from imprisoning Sudanese refugees.
According to an ACRI press release, five of the Sudanese petitioners are from the region of Darfur. The press release references an announcement by Yshai at the end of August that all Sudanese migrants will have until October 15 to leave Israel, after which they will be arrested and detained.
African refugees and Israeli activists protesting on August 31, 2012, against the imprisonment without trial of asylum seekers and refugees in a new, massive prison under construction in the Negev desert (Photo: Activestills)
ACRI alleged that in interviews with the media, the interior minister said that the purpose of these detentions would be to make the lives of the Sudanese migrants unbearable. “If this policy is enacted, thousands of Sudanese asylum seekers along with their children will be hunted down, arrested en masse, and detained indefinitely in extreme conditions in the desert. Included among these people are survivors of genocide and other atrocities in Darfur and other areas,” said the press release.
According to the release, the petition argues that the detentions announced by Yishai are arbitrary, since there is no legal or practical possibility of returning Sudanese citizens to their country, that Yishai lacks the authority to carry out his plans as such authority belongs to the defense minister and that even if Yishai had the authority, the plan is unlawful because its purpose is discriminatory.
The central arguments of the petition are:
- that the detentions announced by the Minister of the Interior are arbitrary, since there is no legal or practical possibility of returning Sudanese citizens to their country;
- that the Minster of the Interior lacks the authority to issue these arrests under the Law to Prevent Infiltration. This authority is granted under the law to the Minster of Defense and he has not delegated it to the Minister of the Interior; and
- even if the Minister of the Interior had the authority to make the declaration as he did, his decision is not lawful because it is not designed for an appropriate purpose, because it is discriminatory, arbitrary, and unfair, and because the violation of fundamental rights caused by it are severe and potentially fatal.
The petition is supported by a strongly worded letter from the Israel Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees dated October 2. The Commissioner expressed his concern on several levels, including Israel’s failure to make individual determinations of the asylum seekers’ refugee status; the fact that the refugees come from regions such as Darfur with well known and well documented human rights abuses; the extreme and present danger of deporting anyone to Sudan after they are known to have been in Israel because of Sudan and Israel’s consideration of each other as “enemy states;” the humanitarian risks of canceling the limited employment opportunities previously afforded by Israel’s policy; and the UN’s general directive to avoid the detention of asylum seekers and use it only as a last resort. The Commissioner also countered the Minister of the Interior’s claim that Sudanese asylum seekers in Israel are not refugees but rather economic migrants: “It is essential to note that sizable number of Sudanese asylum seekers in Israel originate from regions subjected to well recognized human rights abuses, such as Darfur […] Statements to the effect that Sudanese in Israel are not refugees are not factually or legally correct.”
Yishai responded, labeling the “migrant problem” as one of the “greatest threats to our future and our identity as Jewish Zionist state.” He added that he would do “all he could to return every last migrant” to their country of origin despite any criticism.
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