Last update - 00:00 15/02/2007
Furor in Addis Ababa camp over rejected immigrants
By Ayanawo Farada Sanbetu
Hundreds of Ethiopians in Addis Ababa on Wednesday attacked local envoys of the Interior Ministry, whose job it was to distribute letters refusing many of them immigration to Israel.
The ministry is refusing the applications of some 1,700 Ethiopians of about 7,000 still waiting in Ethiopia to immigrate to Israel.
Meanwhile, religious leaders of the Ethiopian community in Israel Wednesday wrote the interior minister, asking him to stop the immigration from Ethiopia immediately and to set up a public committee to probe how thousands of Ethiopians allegedly came to Israel pretending to be Falashmura.
In Addis Ababa, as soon as they started opening the letters of refusal, a commotion began, and the local police had to help the envoys to flee the premises.
"We heard rumors that we were going to get refusal letters and decided to refuse them," said Nagash Asafa, who has been waiting for three years in Addis Ababa and spoke to Haaretz on the telephone.
"The envoys...didn't know who should receive a refusal letter...when they opened them and started reading them...People started yelling and a commotion began," he said.
"The envoys fled with their car back to their office...youngsters chased them but I don't know if they caught them," he said.
Asafa himself does not know if his immigration will be refused. "My father is Jewish and I'm from Azezo," (a town near the Jewish villages) he said. All of those waiting, he said, are determined to fight to go to Israel.
So far more than 90 percent of the Falash Mura applicants have been found eligible to immigrate to Israel. Some 7,000 remain in Gondar, claiming to be Jewish and demanding to immigrate to Israel. The applications of 1,468 have been approved, and they are due to arrive in the next few months. Examination of remaining applications is expected to be finished by mid-year, the sources said.