Hundreds of African migrants launched a hunger strike on Tuesday to protest Israel’s implementation of a policy to expel or jail migrants who fail to leave the country, a spokesman for the group said on Wednesday, AFP reports.
Israel last year made the move to expel thousands of Sudanese and Eritrean migrants who entered the country illegally. They were given an ultimatum to leave or risk being jailed.
As the migrants could face danger or imprisonment if returned to their homelands, Israel is offering to relocate them to an unnamed third country, which the migrants and aid workers say is Rwanda or Uganda, the report said.
Seven Africans from the Holot detention centre on Tuesday were transferred to a prison nearby. The transfer is what triggered the launch of the hunger strike by 750 men held in Holot.
Abdat Ishmael, an Eritrean held at the southern Israel open facility, confirmed this stating that another five were taken to prison on Wednesday.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli interior ministry confirmed they started implementing the deportation or prison policy on Holot detainees ahead of the April 1 mark for the rest of the Africans who had entered Israeli illegally.
Ishmael said many of the detainees would prefer prison over deportation to Africa.
“We saw what happened to people who went (to other African countries) a year or two ago, they don’t receive asylum and can die,” he said.
Migrants began entering Israel through what was then a porous Egyptian border in 2007. The border has since been strengthened, all but ending illegal crossings.
Israel’s deportation or imprisonment plan has drawn criticism from the United Nations’ refugee agency as well as some in Israel.
According to interior ministry figures, there are currently some 42,000 African migrants in Israel, half of them children, women or men with families, who are not facing the April deportation deadline.
Israeli officials stress that no one they classify as a refugee or asylum seeker will be deported.
