Kanyi Okeke
In what looks like a crackdown on immigrants in their country, Israel
has started a massive deportation of Africans comprising mainly
Nigerians in what they called ‘operation clean up’.
In the last few weeks no fewer than 50 Nigerians have been deported
from the middle east country for reasons ranging from what they termed
illegal stay, work permit and other flimsy excuses.
Due to the recent series of offensive and racist statements made by
Israeli politicians, African diplomats in Israel are afraid to walk down
the street, said African ambassadors in Israel during a meeting with
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon….continue reading
The meeting, which was attended by the ambassadors of Angola, Ghana,
Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia and the Ivory Coast, was recently held in the
Foreign Ministry’s offices in Jerusalem, Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli
newspaper reported.This was after the wife of the Ghanian ambassador was
arrested by Israeli police where she was on shopping in Tel Aviv. Israeli’s claim that immigrants are responsible for the ongoing
series of rapes and muggings committed in their country is a way of
calling a dog a bad name in order to hang it.
Reports from Tel Aviv where most of the immigrants live show that
most of them now hide inside their apartments without going to work for
fear of being arrested while on the street. ’Many Nigerians living in
Israel are very law abiding and go their normal businesses’ said an
official of the Nigerian community who doesn’t want his name in print.
The recent crackdown has seen Isreaeli authorities arresting Nigerians with families and taking them to detention camps
sometimes with their very under aged children where they face harsh
punitive measures and untold hardship before being deported to their
country. To worsen the situation, the Nigerian Embassy officials have never
intervened in this ugly incidents being meted on Nigerians, our source
revealed
Mr Iweka [real name withheld] from Enugu state said he has been
living in Israel legally since twelve years working in a restaurant but
was deported on the orders of his employer who wouldn’t want to pay his
accumulated gratuity. He was arrested in his apartment by over twenty
security agents and chained both legs and hands and bundled into a van
even after showing them his valid papers and driven to prison. His
lawyer took his case to court and after spending two months in the
prison under harsh conditions was deported without concluding his case.
He described is ordeal as a racist, barbaric and unhuman.
Member of the Israeli Knesset Shlomo Molla (Kadima) has warned
that, “The State has failed to do its diplomatic due diligence .No one
wants to migrate here if they’re doing well… It doesn’t mean that we
shouldn’t try to send them back, but these events – abusing them like
that – that’s wrong.
“I’ve seen case where people where physically hurt. If that’s not incitement – what is?” he wondered.
Member if Israeli Knesset K Dov Khenin (Hadash) read testimonies
given by teens suspected of assaulting migrants, detailing the violent
abuse they had perpetrated. He further deplored the government’s actions
against them.
