Darfur refugees to get their day in High Court

By Rafael D. Frankel

The last memory Yantin Adam has of his village in the Bora Valley in northern Darfur, Sudan, is plumes of smoke rising from the burning homes he and hundreds of his tribe had just fled as the Janjaweed militia, mounted on horses, swept through in an orgy of rape, murder and destruction.

After escaping to the nearby mountains, the horror was magnified three days later when the notorious band of Sudanese government- backed thugs stormed his hideout, killing his father, uncle and cousin "in front of my eyes."

Three years later, the 30-year-old former engineer and architect is languishing in an Israeli jail after infiltrating across the Egyptian border.

"I had no place to go, and I expected that maybe [Israel] would help me because the problem [in Darfur] is well known to everybody," Adam said from Ma'asiyahu Prison in Ramle during a telephone interview on Sunday. "Unfortunately since my first day here I've been in prison."

For the last 11 months, the asylum seeker has been held under the 1954 Infiltration Law, which allows for the indefinite detention without judicial review of nationals from "enemy" countries who enter the state illegally. He is among 190 refugees from Sudan who escaped the conflict there - designated as a "genocide" by the UN - to Israel only to find themselves arrested and held in prison.

This morning, the High Court of Justice will hear a petition, filed on their behalf by the human rights group Hot Line for Immigrant Workers, seeking to bar the state from holding the refugees under that law.

The hearing comes just a week after massive rallies, organized by Jewish groups, were held in the US calling on the international community to intervene in in Sudanese civil war in which at least 400,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million made refugees.

"Israel has always denied them the right to ask for asylum on the pretext that they are enemy nationals," said Shevy Korzen, the executive director of Hot Line. "Israel should take them in. They are asylum seekers running away from genocide. Israel is a party to the Convention on Protection for Refugees, and it's the right thing to do."

According to an Interior Ministry spokeswoman, the decision to hold the refugees in prison was made at a series of meetings over the last months between officials in the IDF, police and ministries of Justice, Foreign Affairs and Interior. In those meetings, she said, Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz recommended their continued imprisonment until a political solution was found.

The Justice Ministry could not be reached for comment, but its representatives will be arguing the state's case in court this morning.

A ruling against the state would not mean a release from prison for the Sudanese, but it would force the government to allow for public hearings and judicial review of their individual cases as refugees. In about 20 hearings for other Sudanese refugees under those conditions, Hot Line has managed to gain their release from jail into the custody of kibbutzim.

"We don't think [the state] views them as a security threat," Korzen said, citing their detention in Ma'asiyahu as opposed to other, harsher facilities. "It's being done because Israel is afraid it will have to give asylum to all these people and in general it doesn't like giving asylum to non-Jews."

Ironically, Korzen said, not providing the Sudanese asylum because they are "enemy nationals" is a contravention of an international law pushed by Israel because German Jews were denied entry into England because of their German citizenship during the Holocaust.

However, there is historic precedent granting political asylum to non-Jews. Former prime minister Menachem Begin decided to take in refugees from Vietnam in the mid-1970s, and that move was repeated in the early 1990s when the government extended asylum to refugees from the Balkan wars.

Given the recent history of the Jewish people, Israel has a duty to open its arms again, said Prof. Yehuda Bauer, academic adviser at Yad Vashem, who wrote a "Friend of the Court" brief for Monday's hearing.

"It's clearly a genocide and we have a moral responsibility to take care of the few refugees that manage to get here by a miracle and we should not try to send them to a third country," Bauer said.

As Israel mulls over the legal status of the Sudanese, the UN High Commission for Refugees is busy trying to find them a new home. Two Sudan specialists from Geneva have been interviewing refugees in jails and kibbutzim, said UNHCR Representative to Israel Mickey Bavly.

According to Bavly, a host of countries have been contacted by his office about taking in the refugees, and talks are under way about "getting them out of prison."

"We're trying to solve the refugee problem, not change Israeli law," Bavly said. "A solution will be found for all of them. I can assure that none of them will be returned to Darfur."

Meanwhile, Adam sits with his cellmate Ali Abakar, also from Darfur, in Ma'asiyahu, with no clue about when his release from prison will come.

Adam does not regret the clandestine trip he took through the Sinai mountains, guided by Beduin, to enter Israel - he had no other choice. He spent two years in Egypt, where the authorities treated the refugees harshly. The Egyptian secret police, he said, were trying to deport him back to Sudan.

"If I go back there they will kill me at once, this is sure," he said. "I just need protection. I just want to live my life as a human being out of prison."

©2006 The Jerusalem Post