Israel forced African migrants to leave the country, rights group says.
According to a report released on Tuesday by the Human Rights Watch organization, Israel unlawfully coerced almost 7,000 Eritrean and Sudanese nationals into going back to their home countries even though some might risk serious abuse by their oppressive governments.
The report was 83 pages and called "Make Their Lives Miserable: Israel's Coercion of Eritrean and Sudanese Asylum Seekers to Leave Israel". The report highlights that the Israeli government made its legal rules so complicated that Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers couldn't have access to fair and efficient asylum procedures.
The Israeli government would then use these complicated legal rules and definitions as an excuse to deny asylum seekers security and threaten them with "indefinite" detention. The implementation of these draconian policies forced thousands of asylum seekers into leaving Israel.
Israel claims that migrants were given a choice and it was their decision to leave the country. But in fact, according to the Human Rights Watch, it is never really an option.
A senior refugee researcher at Human Rights Watch Gerry Simpson said, "Destroying people's hope of finding protection by forcing them into a corner and claiming they are voluntarily leaving Israel is transparently abusive."
According to the Human Rights Watch, this treatment should be considered as "refoulement", which, under international law, refers to the forcible return "'in any manner whatsoever' of a refugee or asylum seeker to a risk of persecution, or of anyone to likely torture or inhuman and degrading treatment." Simpson who is also the author of the report added "Eritreans and Sudanese in Israel are left with the choice of living in fear of spending the rest of their days locked up in desert detention centers or of risking detention and abuse back home." The organization reported case of one asylum seekers from Sudan who was tortured. Some were facing imprisonment and were labeled as "traitors" when they went back home. In Sudan, visiting Israel is considered a crime and punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The fate of the Eritreans going home is unknown, but there are reports of government practices in Eritrea similar to those in Sudan, to suggesting that they probably face similar risks as the Sudanese, the Organization said.
