To the President of Israel
Mr. Shimon Peres
Dear Mr. President,
I am writing to you concerning a matter which should disturb and distress all those who hold dear the moral character of the State of Israel.
As you know, refugees and asylum-seekers from Sudan, Eritrea, and other conflict-ridden areas have been fleeing Egypt for Israel. These individuals reach Israel after escaping the hellish conditions in their homelands only to suffer persecution in Egypt as well. Moreover, in the past few months Egypt has adopted a policy of deportation of hundreds of Eritrean asylum-seekers, who are being sent back to their home countries, despite the dangers awaiting them there. In the border areas, Egyptian soldiers are firing at asylum-seekers who try to leave Egypt, even though they do not constitute a threat.
The United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees states specifically that it is incumbent on states to proffer aid to asylum-seekers, and in particular to refrain from expelling them from their territory, if the expulsion risks endangering their lives or welfare. The High Court of Justice ruled in 1995 that asylum-seekers should not be returned to the place where they were persecuted or to a third country where they will be in danger of being sent back to the place where they suffered persecuted.
Not only is Israel a signatory to the Convention, but it was among the prime initiators of its formulation in 1951, in the wake of the lessons of the Holocaust and the memory of how Jewish refugees were denied entry by potential countries of refuge. Today, regrettably, the State of Israel is treating refugees and asylum-seekers in a shameful and cruel manner, and is perhaps also indirectly sending them to their deaths.
In August 2007, Israel returned 48 refugees to Egypt, among them adults and children from the Darfur region of Sudan, without permitting them to submit requests for refuge and to access the UN Commission for Refugees, and without examining whether their lives or liberty would be endangered as a result of their return. In order to justify the “hot return procedure,” as the decision-makers refer to it, Israel has cited vague “understandings,” oral agreements between Prime Minister Olmert and President Mubaraq of Egypt. We are now well aware of the destructive consequences of this policy; the refugees were incarcerated for many months in Egypt without access to the staff of human rights organizations, including the UN High Commission on Refugees. Some of them were deported to Sudan, from which they had fled, while the fate of others is completely unknown.
Following the alarming events of August 2007, several Israeli human rights organizations, including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), submitted a petition to the High Court of Justice demanding a prohibition on “hot returns.” The representatives of the State argued that these returns would be carried out in the future only on condition that Egypt provided appropriate assurances as to the welfare of the deportees.
In recent weeks, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has reverted to the policy of “hot return”. In brief, the implication of this policy is the handing over of refugees who recently fled across the border to Israel from the bullets of Egyptian policemen, back to imprisonment at the hands of those same policemen. Several weeks ago, 91 asylum-seekers were sent back and the Egyptian government announced its intention to deport them to the countries from which they escaped.
The IDF claims that the “hot return” procedure entails interrogation of the asylum-seekers by the soldiers before they are expelled. It is doubtful, however, whether a hasty interrogation, conducted by an unskilled soldier who does not speak the language of the asylum-seekers, can truly comprehend the dangers these individuals may face.
I appeal to you to join in the efforts to protect the rights of these disempowered individuals, and to demand unequivocally of the Minister of Defense to immediately cease this illegal policy.
Respectfully and with Sincere Thanks,
Sami Michael
President, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel
For more on the hot return procedure, click here
