Darfur Refugees seek Israeli home

[oberliner]

Janjaweed - Arab militiamen loyal to the Khartoum government - rode into the village on horseback armed with machineguns and began killing the inhabitants.

They torched his family home. "The fire ate my father," said David. His brother was also killed in the attack.

David escaped to Egypt but was afraid that the authorities would send him back to Sudan.

He then took the extraordinary step of paying Bedouin smugglers to take him to Israel.

"I knew they would help as they would understand," said David, standing outside Jerusalem's Holocaust Memorial, where a group of 10 Sudanese refugees visited this week.

"I saw all the pictures of these people suffering and it reminded me of my village."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5155370.stm

[Violet_Crumble]

1. I hope they are granted asylum...

From reading the article, it doesn't sound all that promising though....

The article also said the refugees were initially placed in detention centres. Does anyone with any knowledge of how asylum seekers in Israel are dealt with (Eyl?) know how long the average stay in detention centres are and whether most asylum seekers are then released into the general community?

[eyl]

3. to be honest

I don't know exactly. Going by articles I've read, there are approximately 300 refugees from Sudan in Israel. Originally, they were kept in detention (since they entered the country illegally and came from Sudan, which is considered an enemy country) for around a year; a few months ago, the Supreme Court ruled they could be "remanded" to stay in kibbutzim instead of detention facilities, and so far a hundred or so have done so. I don't know if there is any long-term solutio on the horizon, though.

[Violet_Crumble]

4. Even though a year is a long time...

...thank goodness those refugees ended up in Israel rather than here where they would have been swiftly dispatched to a detention centre on a small island or atoll (it used to be hell-forsaken places in the middle of nowhere like Woomera till the govt decided it was easier for them to deny any request for asylum if they could say the asylum seekers had technically never set foot in Australia), where they'd have been kept locked up like prisoners for a few years until the bureaucratic wheels slowly ground away and out came a rejection of their application for asylum. Then, no matter what their age (they were going to deport a woman who was only a few months shy of 100 who'd been here for years) or the danger of where they'd come from, they get presented with a bill for their upkeep and plane flight home and put on the next plane out...

[eyl]

5. Well, I just hope the remainder are released soon

(especially since they were split among two detention centers, and reportedly the conditions in one of them are suboptimal, to say the least). Mind you, I understand why they're being kept in detention at least for a while; but I'm disappointed it took this long. Ihe kibbutz "remand" system seems to me to be a good interim arrangement, and I hope the remainder are released to it soon until a longer-term soultion is agreed on.

[pelsar]

9. no solid information....

the govt doesnt really know what to do with the refugees.. it seems only when a journalists needing some kind of "human interest story" do we then get a write up a now and then.

I dont know much about the kibbutzim taking them in.....

[Andromeda]

2. I feel so sad for these people.

Israel did take some Bosnian Muslim refugees so I hope they can work around their law about giving asylum to refugees from enemy states that don't recognize Israel.

I know the law is there to protect Israel from infiltrators but if these people are sent back to the Sudan they're as good as dead.

[Tom Joad]

6. Palestinian refugees seek to return to *their* home.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 13.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

[Lurking Dem]

7. You never fail to disappoint.

[Tom Joad]

8. Thank You.

:toast: :toast: