Holot detention facility in the Negev Desert, in Israel housing some 2,500 asylum seekers mainly from Eritrea and Sudan [Jim Hollander/EPA]
Kampala, Uganda - The sky was still an inky black when the flight from Cairo touched down at Entebbe Airport near Kampala, the capital of Uganda, one morning in mid-January, the fluorescent glow spilling from the small terminal providing the only source of light.
It had been 15 hours since Musgun Gebar left Tel Aviv, and the journey staggered him in its brevity. Four years earlier, when he had travelled the other way - from Eritrea in East Africa to Israel - he had done so on foot, a punishing journey across the Sahara and the Sinai that took more than a month.
Kidnappers stalked the route, food was scarce, and half of the people with whom he had travelled didn't survive. But this time, he simply sat down in a small cushioned seat and waited, snapping selfies and eating salty meals from aluminum tins until, suddenly, he had arrived.
Gebar had no visa to enter Uganda. He wasn't carrying an invitation letter or an application form. In fact, he didn't even have a passport. Though he had crossed many borders in his life, he had never done it through the official channel of queues and customs officials and dated stamps.
He only carried $3,500 in clean, hundred dollar bills in his wallet, a temporary travel document called a "laissez passer", and a creased letter from the Israeli government. "Passengers are asked to follow instructions and regulations to ensure a safe and pleasant departure from Israel," it read, with a signature from the Voluntary Departures Unit.
From friends who had come before him, Gebar already knew what would happen next. The man emerged as he stepped inside the terminal, wordlessly ushering him and the nine other Eritreans on the flight away from the passport control line.
Without a glance from the border patrol officers, he led them around the queue, to the baggage claim where their luggage awaited, and then out of the airport's sliding-glass doors. In the car park, a van waited to drive them to a hotel.
After that, they were on their own.
No choice
Human rights organisations have reported that over the past three years this scene has played out hundreds of times in Uganda and neighbouring Rwanda, where more than 3,000 Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers from Israel have been "voluntarily" resettled as of 2015.
Often, those who were resettled dispute whether they truly had a choice.
Gebar, for instance, says that he was being held in an immigration detention camp in the Negev Desert called Holot, when, he claims, officials there informed him that he had three options. If he liked, he could stay indefinitely in the camp. A second option was to go back to Eritrea, the country he had fled five years before. Or, he could agree to take $3,500 and depart for a third country of the Israeli government's choosing.
Gebar didn't hesitate. He took the third option.
Andie Lambe, executive director of the International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI), an NGO that has conducted extensive research into the departure of East African refugees from Israel, also questions just how much choice these refugees have.
"What does it mean when an unknown third country is someone's best option?" he asks. "To me that says they never really had a choice at all."
Media reports suggest that the three countries have cut a secret, high-level deal in which the African states accept refugees in return for arms, military training and other aid from Israel.
The countries involved have given conflicting responses, however, on their involvement.
Sabine Haddad, Israeli population and immigration authority spokeswoman, told Al Jazeera that Israel does have an agreement with two African countries - which she did not name - for the relocation of unwanted asylum seekers. She did not offer a response regarding the weapons exchange part of the agreement.
Both Uganda and Rwanda, on the other hand, deny they have signed any agreement with Israel. Furthermore, neither country has afforded refugee status to any refugees arriving from Israel.
Ugandan government spokesman Ofwono Opondo told Al Jazeera earlier this year that the reports of a deal were "a rumour circulated by Israeli intelligence".
"I have disputed that we have received these individuals," he said.
No rights
Like others around the world, refugees leaving Israel for Rwanda and Uganda find themselves in a precarious position. Their lives straddle two countries, and movement either forwards or backward is nearly impossible.
0 comments:
Post a Comment