Israeli protests: a refugee's story

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/06/israel-refugees-protest-sudan

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Joseph Tuto wants to stop running. Tuto, not his real name, is an athlete from the Nuba region of Sudan. He trains in 400m, 800m and 1500m distances and has won medals in professional international competitions.

But this is not what he wants to stop. For the past six years Tuto, his wife and two young children have lived a life on the run, fleeing violence in Sudan to seek a better life in Israel.

Yet after settling in the town of Arad, life for the Tutos remained a struggle. "I stayed in Israel for five years and six months and I worked as a cleaner in hotels," Tuto said.

"Life in Israel is very hard for refugees. I worked from 6am to 5pm and then I trained [as an athlete]. My children also faced racism at school. In Israel you are like a machine. You work from day to night and you face racism from the highest ranked [person] to the lowest," he added.

The Tutos were among an estimated 60,000 migrants, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, in Israel – a community that the government has declared unwelcome. Last year the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was determined to remove "tens of thousands of infiltrators", saying new measures were necessary to "protect the Jewish and democratic character of the state".

Under the international convention on refugees, of which Israel is a signatory, the government is unable to forcibly repatriate anyone if there is ongoing violence in their home country – so it is seeking other ways to reduce migrant numbers.

One of these is a controversial new law that allows migrants without visas to be detained indefinitely in an open-prison that required them to sign in three times a day. Protests against this law, which was introduced three weeks ago, have seen tens of thousands of migrants taking to the streets of Tel Aviv yesterday and today, and a strike that has caused disruption to businesses such as restaurants, hotels and cleaning services, where migrants are often employed.

The government is also offering financial incentives to refugees in an attempt to get them to return home voluntarily. For the Tuto family this looked like an attractive option so, rather than face detention, they accepted a $1,500 payment to return to Sudan via Egypt.

But when the family arrived they faced further persecution from the Sudanese government, which strictly forbids its citizens from travelling to Israel. At the airport, Tuto told officials that the family had been in Egypt rather than Israel, but the deception was easily detected by Sudanese authorities as Tuto's children, aged seven and five, had lived most of their lives in Israel and speak Hebrew rather than Arabic.

Three days later Sudan's National Intelligence and Security Service visited Tuto's home in Khartoum. He was out at the time and the officials took his mother into custody for days, questioning her about her son's whereabouts.

Fearing for his life, Tuto and his family went into hiding. "In Sudan, security forces were after me every day. They wanted to put me in jail," Tuto said. "There is no security in my country, I couldn't live there."

"I moved from safe house to safe house. I was terrified every day and I moved between more than 10 houses, staying with friends and family. They would beat and intimidate my mother and my siblings. I'd rather die than stay in Sudan," he added.

So once again the family was forced to flee, arriving in a country he would prefer not to identify, where again they are unwelcome. They live in a rented house with a one month permit to remain, and the little money they have is slowly running out.

"My children don't go to school. We don't leave the house. We don't know anyone. We don't know anything." he said. "I regret leaving Israel. At least there I could work. I feel tricked by the Israeli government."

Amnesty International, which has documented the stories of migrants in Israel, has criticised the way they are treated. Yonatan Gher, the director of Amnesty International Israel, said: "Asylum seekers in Israel... do not get access to fair and transparent asylum proceedings, have no work permits and no access to basic health and welfare services."

He said the new detention law added to the pressures on refugees, who, like Tuto, were being driven to accept so-called voluntary return forms, only to put their lives in danger.

Both the Israeli and Sudan government have denied responsibility for the Tuto family's fate. An Israeli government spokesman described the family's experiences in Israel as "marginal incidents" that were not representative of the country's "multicultural, multi-religious, and multi-lingual" cultural diversity.

Dr Khalid Al Mubarak, a spokesman for the Sudanese government, rejected suggestions that the security services intimidated returnees. "Some people go to Israel, some are recruited and trained (to fight the Sudanese government), and then they are sent back to the Sudan. Of course our security service would need to screen people (returning)," he said, "but any tales of going to the family and beating them up, that is nonsense."

For Tuto, the only option left is to keep running. He is currently trying to train with a local running group. "I still have $900 left (of the Israeli money)," he said. "Our only hope is to be resettled to another country. I don't have any other hope. I can't work and I have no money."

<em>Additional reporting by Patrick Galey. Maeve McClenaghan is a journalist at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism</em>

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