Abused and killed, migrants sent by Israel to African ‘havens’
At the gates of Holot, an Israeli detention centre for asylum seekers and illegal immigrants in the desert near the Egyptian border, a group of African men are sitting by the side of a dusty road and playing music on their phones.
Every few minutes, the tinny beats are drowned out by the roar of Israeli F-15 fighter jets overhead and in the distance is the crackle of gunfire from an army training base.
Here, thousands of migrants are about to be turned over by Israel to African nations, where far from having a comfortable and safe life, they are thrown into the path of terrorists and traffickers.
Tomas Yohannes, 29, an Eritrean, seems to notice neither the music nor the aircraft as he sits quietly at a wooden picnic table and explains the decision facing him.
“If I have to choose between Rwanda or in prison, it is better for me to stay in prison,” he says.
This is the choice Israel’s government will soon thrust on around 40,000 Eritrean and Sudanese migrants and asylum seekers as it puts pressure on them to leave the country.
Holot will be closed early next year and its residents forced to pick between a closed prison or a plane ticket out of the country.
They can choose to stay in Israel and face indefinite imprisonment. Or they can accept $3,500 (£2,600) from Israeli authorities and agree to go to a “third country” such as Rwanda or Uganda. The choice might seem like an easy one. Both Rwanda and Uganda are relatively stable and the cash would go a long way towards helping an immigrant to start a new life in either.
However, stripped of their money and their travel papers and forced out of Rwanda, many of the migrants end up in a human smuggling pipeline that ends in Libya.
Three Eritrean men who agreed to leave Israel in 2014 ended up in the hands of jihadists in Libya a year later, said the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, a human rights group. Their friends in Israel learnt of their fate only when they were murdered on camera in a 2015 video.
Other migrants who agreed to leave Israel went on to drown in the Mediterranean as they tried the dangerous crossing from Libya to Europe. One Eritrean saw his pregnant wife die when her packed rubber boat sank while his stayed afloat.
Research by academics and human rights groups has suggested that these “third countries” are not the safe havens that Israel makes them out to be. “What the deportees expect to face in Rwanda is the beginning of a journey of human trafficking, torture and in many cases, death,” said Lior Birger, a PHD student at Hebrew University.
Ms Birger is part of a group gathering testimonies from migrants who took Israel up on its offer and followed what happened to them after they agreed to take the government’s money and leave.
“There is a definite pattern,” Ms Birger said. “They get a vague promise from the interior ministry that if they leave they will be able to work in Rwanda and they will have rights.
“They take the $3,500 and get on the plane, but when they get to Rwanda, someone takes their documents and money, locks them in a hotel, and tells them they have to leave the country in a few days.” According
‘What the deportees expect to face in Rwanda is the beginning of a journey of human trafficking, torture and in many cases, death’
to media reports, the Israeli government will pay Rwanda $5,000 for every African asylum seeker it takes off Israel’s hands.
However, rights groups suspect the agreement runs deeper than that.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is proud of his record of improving Israel’s diplomatic ties across Africa. By offering African leaders access to Israel’s security technology and water expertise, Mr Netanyahu has made himself a welcome visitor in capitals across the continent.
He announced last week that Israel is opening an embassy in Rwanda. Many believe the embassy is just the visible part of a broader deal, which includes an agreement on asylum seekers, who Mr Netanyahu often refers to as “infiltrators”. Similar examples include Italy allegedly paying militias to prevent boats from leaving Libya for Europe, or Australia keeping migrants in an offshore detention centre on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru.
Shani Bar-tuvia, an Israeli academic who studies refugee policy, said Israel’s plan was “unprecedented”.
“Not a single Western country has forcibly deported people with a clear need for international protection, after many years of living in its territory, to a country to which they have no link at all,” she said.
Israel’s supreme court approved the government’s plan of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda or Uganda earlier this year. An interior ministry spokesman pointed to the ruling when asked about reports that people who left Israel were going on to die in Libya or in the Mediterranean.
“The high court already ruled on the agreements and found they are proportional and appropriate for implementation,” the spokesman said. “We think there is no need to add anything to the decision of the court.”