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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">African refugees defy desert cold,
Israeli internment in march for freedom</h1>
<div class="field-author"> <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/budour-youssef-hassan"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Budour
Youssef Hassan</a> </div>
<div class="field-publisher"> <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">http://electronicintifada.net/content/african-refugees-defy-desert-cold-israeli-internment-march-freedom/13038</a>
</div>
<div class="field-publication-date"> <span class="date-display-single"
property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2013-12-27T11:10:00+00:00">27 December 2013</span> </div>
<div class="field-body">
<div id="file-26359"
class="file file-image file-image-jpeg media-element file-full"
style="width: 618px;"><br>
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<p>On 15 December, about 150 <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/africans-israel">African
asylum-seekers</a>, mostly Sudanese, began a march from the Holot
internment camp in the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/negev-naqab">Naqab desert</a>
with the intention of reaching the Israeli prime minister’s residence
in <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/jerusalem">Jerusalem</a>.</p>
<p>Braving the freezing cold and refusing meals for three days, the
African asylum-seekers staged their march in protest of an <a
href="http://972mag.com/knesset-passes-revised-law-for-detention-of-african-asylum-seekers/83395/">“anti-infiltration”
law which was passed</a> on 10 December in Israel’s parliament, the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/knesset">Knesset</a>.</p>
<p>The law was swiftly enacted to circumvent an <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-high-court">Israeli
high court</a> ruling that struck down the previous version of the
anti-refugee <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/prevention-infiltration-law">Prevention
of Infiltration Law</a>.</p>
<p>Refugee rights advocates, including the Hotline for Refugees and
Migrant Workers in Israel, consider the newly-amended law to be <a
href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/12/israel-african-refugees.html">even
worse than the annulled provision</a>.</p>
<p>The revised law reduces from three years to one year the amount of
time that Israeli authorities can imprison asylum-seekers without
trial. But it also stipulates that refugees can be held indefinitely
and without judicial review in an internment camp.</p>
<p>The Holot internment camp is located in <a
href="http://972mag.com/knesset-passes-revised-law-for-detention-of-african-asylum-seekers/83395/">the
middle of a firing zone</a> in the Naqab (Negev) desert, 40 kilometers
away from the city of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bir-al-saba">Bir al-Saba</a>
(Beersheva). Although the Israeli government claims it is an open
facility, the refugees are required to show up at three roll calls per
day and are under curfew at night.</p>
<p>Over 1,000 Sudanese refugees imprisoned in the Saharonim jail were
transferred to the Holot camp.</p>
<p>The camp is isolated from any residential area and the refugees held
there are not allowed to apply for work permits. This means they are
effectively locked up under terrible conditions, in a striking reminder
of the internment camps in which the US held its Japanese citizens
during World War II.</p>
<h2>Setting a precedent</h2>
<p>It is not surprising, then, that African asylum-seekers decided to
take matters into their own hands and march to Jerusalem with their
demands. They want an end to indefinite incarceration and for the
Israeli authorities to examine their asylum applications in accordance
with the <a href="http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49da0e466.html">UN’s 1951
Refugee Convention</a>. Israel signed and ratified this agreement but
fails to respect it.</p>
<p>The march set an important precedent for two main reasons.</p>
<p>Unlike many of the pro-refugee protests that take place in <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/tel-aviv">Tel Aviv</a>, this
march was led and planned by refugees themselves rather than Zionist
leftists. Sudanese refugees organized this mass action and were joined
by other Sudanese and Eritrean refugees who live in Tel Aviv,
Palestinian residents of of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/al-araqib">al-Araqib</a> (a
repeatedly demolished village not recognized by Israel) and Israeli
solidarity activists.</p>
<p>The Israeli solidarity activists included Knesset members from the
political party <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/meretz">Meretz</a>.
They constantly tried to dominate the march, giving speeches appealing
to the Israeli public, invoking Jewish identity and the “Jewish refugee
narrative.” (Needless to say, the refugee narrative brought up in these
speeches did not mention 750,000 Palestinians displaced by Zionist
colonizers during the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/nakba">Nakba</a> — Israel’s <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/ethnic-cleansing">ethnic
cleansing</a> of the Palestinian people in 1948).</p>
<p>A second reason why this march set a precedent is that it
represented an inspiring act of civil disobedience by the refugees.
Despite knowing that they would ultimately be arrested and taken back
to Saharonim prison once they reached Jerusalem, they did not try to
run away — even though they could easily have done so.</p>
<h2>“We want dignity”</h2>
<p>After two days of traveling, the refugees arrived in front of the
Israeli prime minister’s residence around 10:30 am. They chanted “We
are human beings,” “we want dignity,” “we are proud of our black skin”
and “freedom yes, prison no.”</p>
<p>The Electronic Intifada spoke to Mubarak Ali Muhammad, who fled
violence in the <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/darfur">Darfur</a>
region of <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/sudan">Sudan</a>
only to be immediately imprisoned by Israel when he arrived in 2012.</p>
<p>“As soon as I arrived the Israeli police arrested me,” Muhammad
said. “I was held in Saharonim and Ketziot jails for 18 months but when
the Supreme Court [as Israel’s high court is also known] ordered our
release [in September], we were transferred to the open detention
center in Holot.”</p>
<p>Speaking about the detention conditions in Saharonim, Muhammad said:
“In the prison we are not treated as human beings and the conditions
are very difficult. On 5 May 2012, for instance, we staged a nonviolent
protest against the rough conditions so the prison guards responded by
beating and shackling us.”</p>
<p>Asked if he dreams of going back to Darfur one day, Muhammad
replied: “Of course we cannot now, but if [Sudanese leader] Omar
al-Bashir is overthrown and there is stability, I’ll go back to Darfur
immediately. I want to get married and have kids and I miss my family
there and no-one dislikes his homeland.”</p>
<h2>“Freezing cold”</h2>
<p>Muhammad also spoke about the tough journey that the asylum-seekers
had to make from the Naqab to Jerusalem. “We walked for almost eight
hours by foot from Holot to Bir al-Saba amid the freezing cold of the
desert,” he said. “Some marching refugees passed out because they were
on hunger strike. We spent Monday night in a kibbutz and continued the
march on Tuesday morning.”</p>
<p>The refugees originally planned to walk all the way from Holot to
Jerusalem on foot but could not do that due to the snow storm that
struck Jerusalem a few days earlier. Some refugees attended the march,
wearing only socks because they had no shoes.</p>
<p>Najmiddine, a refugee who lives in Tel Aviv, spoke to The Electronic
Intifada giving only his first name. He fled what the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/international-criminal-court">International
Criminal Court</a> has described as genocide in Darfur.</p>
<p>“Although I am not imprisoned, south Tel Aviv feels like a big
prison for us,” he said. “I believe that all refugees, whether in Tel
Aviv or the open detention center in the Naqab, share the same cause
and demands. We demand the Israeli government look into our asylum
application and decide our status.”</p>
<p>Najmiddine emphasized that he wants to go back to Sudan once
stability is restored but right now it’s impossible: “I really miss my
mother, my friends and my homeland. I miss going back to Sudan really
bad.”</p>
<h2>“Some people are racist”</h2>
<p>Another Sudanese asylum-seeker, who asked not to be identified, said
he fled <a
href="http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2077376,00.html">ethnic
cleansing in the Nuba Mountains</a> in the south Kordofan region of
Sudan. He has been living in Tel Aviv for eight years.</p>
<p>Asked if he faced racial abuse, he said, “Yes, some people are
racist but others are very kind with us. I was not personally attacked
but I heard from my friends that they were harassed and attacked by
racist mobs.”</p>
<p>After more than an hour of chanting in front of the prime minister’s
residence, the refugees and allies walked to the Knesset building where
they were violently arrested by Israeli police who described them as
“infiltrators.” The refugees were loaded onto buses and taken back to
Saharonim prison.</p>
<p>On Thursday 19 December, over 150 Sudanese and Eritrean
asylum-seekers walked out again from Holot internment camp in
solidarity with their imprisoned comrades. After marching for an hour
in the desert, Israeli immigration police launched a brutal campaign of
arrests against all refugees who dared march out of the open prison.
The police’s behavior was so extreme that it even flouted Israel’s own
draconian law.</p>
<p>This time, the immigration police had no intention of allowing the
refugees to march to a residential area and the only media
representatives that covered the attack on refugees were photographers
from the ActiveStills collective. As immigration police officers
violently beat and verbally abused them, marching refugees were
screaming and crying bitterly: “Freedom freedom.”</p>
<p>The internment camp is yet another chapter in Israel’s ongoing
inhumane treatment of African asylum-seekers. After <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/racist-ringleaders-2013-israels-war-africans-intensifies/13023">vicious
incitement propagated by Knesset members</a> and state-appointed
rabbis, imprisonment without charge or trial, denial of basic rights,
racist pogroms and so-called “voluntary” deportation under pressure and
threats of indefinite detention and financial incentives, refugees are
now facing indefinite detention in an open prison in the middle of the
desert.</p>
<p>Refugees who have fled genocide in Darfur, ethnic cleansing in south
Kordofan, the brutal, Israel-backed dictatorship in <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/eritrea">Eritrea</a> and the
torture camps in the <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/sinai">Sinai</a>,
face a new form of enslavement in the supposed “refugee haven” of
Israel, which is anything but a haven for non-Jewish black people.</p>
<p><em>Budour Youssef Hassan is a Palestinian anarchist and law
graduate based in occupied Jerusalem. She can be followed on Twitter <a
href="https://twitter.com/Budour48">@Budour48</a>.</em></p>
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