AfricaHuman Rights

African migrants protest in Tel Aviv

341303_African-migrantsAfrican migrants and human rights activists have demonstrated in Tel Aviv to protest against the Israeli regime’s detention policies.

Hundreds of migrants, mostly Sudanese and Eritreans, along with a number of rights activists took to the streets of Tel Aviv on Saturday evening, shouting, “freedom” and “no more prison.”

They demanded that the Tel Aviv regime not send them to open detention facilities and grant them full refugee status.

The Israeli parliament, Knesset, recently approved a controversial law allowing officials to keep African migrant workers in detention facilities without trial for one year.

The new law also gives Israeli authorities the right to send illegal migrants to complexes called ‘open facilities’ until they are deported or they voluntarily go back to their homeland.

Last week, Israeli soldiers broke up a protest outside the parliament building and removed some 200 African demonstrators.

Some 500 migrants now are placed in the new facilities and are under tough control.

Commentators say the open facilities serve as prisons.

More than 50,000 African migrants currently work in low-paying jobs in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Human Right Watch has said that Tel Aviv used the “threat of prolonged detention” to force the migrants to give up their asylum claims. “Israel should end its unlawful detention policy and release all asylum seekers,” the rights organization stated.

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