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African migrants behind barbed wire, curtesy Israel
African migrants behind barbed wire, curtesy Israel
Kifle was in the fourth grade at Bet Soira — the "Revolution School" run by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front at their rear base in Harareb — when the final battle of the 30-year struggle for independence from Ethiopia was fought in 1991 outside Asmara.
His father, a fighter, had been killed in the war, and his mother and a younger brother were based elsewhere then. But Kifle was not alone. His family was the liberation front.
Today, Kifle languishes in a minimum-security prison, euphemistically termed a "detention center," in Israel's sweltering Negev Desert, unsure where his life is headed. His brother is a refugee in South Africa. His mother remains in Eritrea. Like most Eritrean refugees I've interviewed on four continents over the past six months, he asked that his real name be withheld to protect relatives from retribution at home and himself from repercussions in Israel.
Whether he or the others are right to be afraid at this point — many tell stories of family members punished in Eritrea after their flight — fear and uncertainty are their constant companions. Their experience teaches them this.
Comment: Victims at home, victims in the hands of "rescuers." Eritreans have fled because of lack of human rights, lack of freedom of speech, religion and movement, suffering torture, sexual abuse, human trafficking, organ harvesting and inhumane treatment in underground prisons. Eritreans are defined by the UNHCR as a "temporary humanitarian protection group." Instead of finding a safe haven, they are treated as cattle in Israeli concentration camps. The Palestinian atrocities are only one example of Israel's appalling behavior to "others." Incarceration of inconvenient people seems to be the popular policy and Israel is one of several countries that exemplifies this action.
The Israeli High Court struck down the anti-infiltration law and ordered the state to close Holot and limit the detention of migrants, citing conditions were an "unbearable violation of basic rights, right to freedom and right to dignity." Right-wing MKs are attempting to limit the court and reinstate the abusive protocol, justifying that African immigrants may be "operatives of hostile states or terrorist organizations," contribute to "congestion," and are a "demographic threat to the Jewish majority." The Israeli government currently employs a policy that includes neglect, vilification, detention and repatriation in order to create a Jewish state with maximum land and minimum Arabs/non-Jews, the homeland agenda.