Temperatures dropped to around zero degrees Celsius, and last week many of the approximately 2,300 African asylum seekers detained in Holot complained that the Israel Prison Service (IPS) had confiscated their personal space heaters. All of the rooms in Holot are unheated and uninsulated, except for a public dining room, a public lounge – and all of the rooms used soley by Israel's prison guards.
Under Threat From High Court, Government To Install Heat For African Asylum Seekers
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Heaters will be installed in every room in the Holot detention facility within one week, the government reportedly promised the High Court of Justice Thursday night, Ha'aretz reported.
Temperatures dropped to around zero degrees celsius, and last week many of the approximately 2,300 African asylum seekers detained in Holot complained that the Israel Prison Service (IPS) had confiscated their personal space heaters. All of the rooms in Holot are unheated and uninsulated, except for a public dining room, a public lounge – and all the rooms used soley by Israel's prison guards.
The IPS claimed the space heaters were fire hazards but at the same time refused to provide heat.
When Holot was constructed specifically to house the African asylum seekers the government persists in calling “infiltrators” and “migrants,” refugee rights activists noted that its remote location in the Negev Desert made it vulnerable to extremes of temperatures and lobbied to have the facility built elsewhere or, if not, to be built in a way that provided heat and cooling. The government refused to do so.
So last week when the temperatures dipped near freezing and African asylum seekers – the vast majority of whom would likely qualify for refugee status if the government would fairly process their applications – tried to stay warm by sleeping under mounds of clothes, rags and other material, three human rights organizations – the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, and Physicians for Human Rights – filed an emergency petition with the High Court to force the government to provide heat.
On Monday, the eve of the High Court hearing, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein told the High Court that any asylum seeker who wanted to leave Holot during the next 72 hours would be given permits to do so, provided they agreed to return by the end of those three days. That was supposed to allow the African asylum seekers to find warmer places to stay while the Israel Prison Service dealt with the heating issue.
But Ha’aretz reported today that many asylum seekers told it that the permits they received were for 24 or 48 hours only.
Regardless of how long those permits were valid, the reality is that the African asylum seekers in Holot still don’t have heat.
Thursday night, the government reportedly told the High Court that according to data from the Population, Immigration and Border Authority, only 124 asylum seekers had actually requested permits to leave Holot this week. The government apparently meant this as a defense of its actions and as proof heaters were not needed. But many African asylum seekers held in Holot have nowhere else to go and no money to pay for hotels or transportation.
The government also told the High Court that until the heaters (which reportedly work as air conditioners in hot weather) are installed, African asylum seekers can still get permits to leave Holot for three days.
“We welcome the installation of the [heater-]air conditioners. But it’s regrettable that it was necessary to go all the way to the High Court to get them to see to an issue as basic as heating. It’s important to remember that the [heater-]air conditioners will help us deal with the cold at Holot, but they don’t solve the problem: Human beings shouldn’t be here. Holot must be closed,” Mutasim Ali, one of the leaders of the African asylum seekers, told Ha’aretz. He has been held in Holot for the for the past eight months.
The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly skirted and evaded court rulings related to African asylum seekers and has done everything in its power to harass them and try to force them to leave the country.
Under international law, Israel cannot deport most of these asylum seekers because the countries they come from – Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan – would likely imprison, torture or kill them.
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