Abandoned in the desert - Haaretz

Subscribe to Print Edition

Thu., January 10, 2008 Shvat 3, 5768

Israel Time: 22:49 (EST+7)

web haaretz.com

Back to Homepage

Rosner's Domain

Diplomacy

Defense

Jewish World

Opinion

National

Print Edition

Advertising

Books

Arts & Leisure

Business

Real Estate

Easy Start

Travel

Week's End

Anglo File

Abandoned in the desert

By Nurit Wurgaft

Tags: refugees, Ketziot

At the entrance to the tent stands a tall Sudanese woman, wearing flip-flops and holding an 18-month-old child, who doesn't look any older than a year. The child's cheeks are dry from the wind and the cold. He stares apathetically, doesn't smile and doesn't cry. "It's very cold, maybe you should bring the child inside," suggests a compassionate warden. But the tent - canvas sheets that are blowing in the wind - is not enough protection from the cold. Or from the rain.

Five months ago, a wing that "is separate from the prison and suitable for women and children" was dedicated with great fanfare at the Ketziot Prison, which is located near Israel's border with Egypt. Journalists and politicians who were invited to look around admired the neat rooms and the pictures of Disney characters decorating the walls in the covered courtyard. Less than half a year has passed and now women and children, including infants, are being housed in tents exposed to the wind. Each tent holds between 10 and 18 detainees, who sleep on field cots with military blankets, without heating. Nobody knows how long they'll be kept there or when they will be released, if at all. Men from southern Sudan who manage to find work in hotels are slowly being released from the prison, but the women and children remain.

Agnes, a refugee from southern Sudan, remembers us from a visit in August. At the time she said that she was willing to move to a tent, as long as she could be with her husband. She was indeed transferred to a tent, but her husband is still being held in another encampment. Although they are separated by only a few meters, they meet only once every two weeks, for one hour. In the summer she thought their stay at Ketziot was temporary. She proudly told us that she was pregnant and was optimistically planning her family life after the birth of her first child. Now, in her sixth month, her pregnancy is obvious. As is her despair.

	Advertisement

"There aren't enough showers and not enough hot water. In my condition I sometimes wash in cold water," she said during a visit two weeks ago, and pleaded: "Get me out of here - I don't want to give birth to my child in prison."

The commander of the wing, Lieutenant Colonel Oded Saar, recalled that in the past there was talk about the reunification of families in the new tent compound. But, he noted, "There are so many problems that the men agree that it wouldn't be good, even if they won't say so."

The Israel Prison Service (IPS) spokesman, Yaron Zamir: "Keeping women, men and children together is possible only according to the regulations for special custodial arrangements. The subject is being handled in the Interior Ministry and the Internal Security Ministry, and at this point no regulations have been issued. Members of the same family meet according to the usual visitation arrangements and according to the recommendation of a social worker, and even more often."

Agnes' fear that she will give birth in prison is a realistic one. One of her friends recently had a baby. When her labor pains began she was taken to Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva, bore her child there and three days later returned to the encampment with the baby. The infant was named Albert, after the prison's deputy commander. Maybe the next baby will be called Oded after the commander of the wing.

Albert's mother is experienced in giving birth under difficult conditions. In 2003 she fled from southern Sudan with her husband and two young children, after a raid by an Islamic militia that razed their village to the ground. Two more children were born during the years of wandering: First the family arrived in Khartoum, the capital, and from there they continued to Egypt.

Someone goes to wake up the woman's other children. Her eldest son, 7 or 8 years old, comes out of the tent rubbing his eyes. "At night we don't sleep because it's cold, so we sleep in the morning," he explained.

In any case, he and his friends have no reason to get up in the morning. There are 98 children detained at present in Ketziot - 18 of them under the age of two, 34 of preschool age (2-6), and 46 of school age (6-18). Nonetheless, there are no classrooms, as required by law.

The IPS spokesman explained that an appeal was made about this to the Education Ministry, "and according to their reply and in accordance to the Compulsory Education Law, the data regarding the number and ages of the children were sent, but at this stage no classroom has been opened by the ministry."

The spokesman added: "IPS employees and various volunteers keep the women and children occupied every day with learning reading and writing, and with various creative activities."

Education Ministry southern region director Amira Haim: "About two weeks ago, three months after the children arrived in Israel, the Education Ministry opened a facility in Ketziot. We hired two teachers and there are two classes, which operate every day from 8 A.M. to 1 P.M."

"I have no notebook and there's no school," said one 12-year-old boy. "I studied in Cairo in a United Nations school and I want to study more. I don't want to forget what I learned." What do they do all day? "We watch television," he answered, and added, pointing to a slide in a sandbox, "and that is for little children."

The head count

At the entrance to their encampment 200 men were standing in rows of 10; the vast majority come from Africa. At a sign from the warden they knelt on the cement floor and lowered their heads. That is how the head count is done; the warden passes in front of the rows and counts the detainees' backs. The results of the count this time did not satisfy the warden and he had a short discussion, shouting at a female warden standing at the other end of the encampment. Three people were missing. One of them emerged from the tent and slowly approached the group; apparently he didn't wake up or didn't feel well. One of the kneelers tried to rise, but the warden pushed his shoulder down: "What's going on here? You aren't allowed to get up until the end of the counting."

The men were surprised to hear that at Maasiyahu Prison up north, the counting is done in the courtyard or in the rooms, next to the beds, with the men standing up rather than kneeling.

"I don't know why they count us this way, like sheep. This is a prison, so we don't ask questions," said one refugee, from Ivory Coast. "What's important is when we leave here," added another.

There are 1,001 refugees in Ketziot, 793 of them men, and they all wanted to tell their stories. The Liberian who fled from his country two years ago, after his brother was murdered during the civil war, said he's afraid he will be next. A refugee from Ivory Coast, who escaped after his village was burned and looted, explained that he had nowhere to return to. A small group of Iraqi detainees, refugees of the war or of its consequences, said they didn't understand why they were being treated like enemies. People from Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Guinea and Somalia displayed papers on which court decisions concerning custodial review were written in Hebrew. Some of the papers were falling apart from dampness. "It's from the rain," apologized one refugee.

In the tent he was sharing with another 17 men, mattresses, blankets and clothing were also damp. Some of the refugees were wearing brown prisoners' coats given to them by the IPS; some wound green IPS towels around their heads - like improvised keffiyehs - for protection from the cold. In the tent adjacent to the showers the floor is always wet, because of the water from the shower. Still, all of them had only one request: that the authorities "allow us to go out and work, so we can take care of ourselves and our families." But first, they wanted to know what will happen to them. "They brought us here and forgot about us," said a refugee from Ivory Coast. "If you say we have to wait here another month or two, we can tolerate that - but just tell us how long."

The sense of abandonment is reinforced by the restriction on visits imposed by the IPS. In Maasiyahu there is a weekly visiting day for foreigners, when everyone with identification papers can visit anyone he wishes. In Ketziot, where the regulations are like those referring to security prisoners, visits are permitted only to first-degree relatives. This restriction, combined with the distance and the difficulty of access, in effect prevents visits.

The IPS spokesman: "Due to the difficulty of identification and the absence of legal certification, at this stage there are visits by first-degree relatives. However, each request is examined individually."

The IPS people seemed to have difficulty believing that the refugees felt humiliated by the head count. "They told you that?" one staffer asked, as though the kneeling position is less humiliating since there have been no complaints about it. The official explanation: "A head count is done here as it is done in [all] prisons; we insist that there be no movement during the counting."

A hunger strike

One day two weeks ago, the refugees from Eritrea declared a hunger strike. "We won't eat until they come to talk to us from the UN," they announced. The prison authorities reacted with sanctions: First the refugees were denied cigarettes, then the television was taken away. While two wardens dragged the television out of the encampment, 200 men sitting in exemplary order at the entrances to the tents watched them.

"We want them to come to speak to us," repeated three refugees, who had apparently been chosen to serve as representatives. "Let them listen to what we have to say."

The men said they were told their cases were being examined by the UN High Commission for Refugees, but the commission had yet to speak to them. At the request of the UN, Israel has not been deporting the Eritreans to their homeland because they're liable to pay with their lives for having left. Some of them fled for fear of the compulsory military draft; others were persecuted for belonging to the Pentecostal Church, which was outlawed in Eritrea. Everyone who has fled is considered a deserter and his family faces imprisonment. Said one refugee: "Each of us has someone from the family in prison. Do you think we would run away just like that, knowing that our parents or wives or brothers will pay for it?"

When we tried to decide on ways to maintain contact with the detainees, it turned out that the refugees in Ketziot do not even have phone cards for the single public phone in the encampment. They are not allowed to have cell phones. Their conditions are thus worse than those of the prisoners in Maasiyahu, almost all of whom have cell phones.

The IPS spokesman explained the prohibition as stemming from "security considerations." He added that in order to allow telephone contact, it was decided to provide public phones, and "in important and urgent cases, they are allowed to speak on the phones in the prison."

The punishment meted out because of the hunger strike, he explained, was imposed to bring about "an end to the strike, for the sake of the refugees' health and so as to restore order to the place."

Happy holidays

On the way out the Muslim refugees, who were then celebrating Id al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, were wished a happy holiday. The Christians received Christmas greetings. Christine, aged 22, from southern Sudan, sighed. "We wanted to go out to pray at a church on the holiday," she said. When asked what she wished for herself for the holiday, tears well up in her eyes: "My father was killed in Sudan. When I came here with my husband, I thought our troubles had come to an end, but now I see they haven't. I only want to leave here. I no longer dream of a good life, only that things shouldn't get worse."

Much has been written about the housing of refugees in Ketziot Prison. Back in August already, Judge Elad Azar of the Custody Review Tribunal claimed that Ketziot was not a suitable place for children - and at that point, the detainees were still living in rooms. The Knesset has even criticized the arrangement.

Attorney Yonatan Berman from the Hotline for Migrant Workers, who visits the place occasionally, said it is hard to shake off the impression that the refugees are being held in such conditions in order to deter more refugees from coming to Israel. He explained that many of the children underwent harsh experiences even before coming to this country, and added that there is a possibility that the long months of detention in such difficult conditions will leave additional emotional scars.

MK Zahava Gal-On of Meretz appealed to Minister of Internal Security Avi Dichter, demanding that the humiliating practice of having the refugees kneel when being counted be stopped immediately. "The court has ruled that prison walls must not separate a person from his dignity," Gal-On reminded him. The MK said things are even worse when it comes to refugees who seek protection in Israel, and she added that she intends to demand more freedom of movement among the encampments during the daytime hours, since "it is inconceivable that couples in a compound that is not intended to be a prison should wait two weeks for a one-hour meeting."

A few days after our visit, Agnes was released from prison and taken to a shelter in the north of the country. "I'm happy that I won't give birth in prison, because I was afraid that my baby would get sick," she told us. "Now I hope that before the birth they'll release my husband, too. I so much wanted him to be with me when the baby is born."

Bookmark to del.icio.us


	'Bush go home'
	Israeli Arab parties join leftist protests against the Bush visit.


	Peace overture
	Syria says it isn't seeking a military solution with Israel.




1.	since when??	16:18	\|	JB	05/01/08

2.	JB it is not illegal to seek refuge	17:12	\|	Marilyn	05/01/08

Today Online


	Bush implores ministers to stay behind Olmert
	Responses: 306


	Libya thwarts Security Council censure of Shlomi missile strike
	Responses: 96


	Shavit: If they want a state, Palestinians must undergo ideology change
	Responses: 184


	W. Bank Palestinians brace for visit by 'that criminal' Bush
	Responses: 66

More Headlines
22:08 Bush implores government ministers to keep Olmert in power


21:11 Qassam hits by Negev cafeteria, causing damage but no injuries


20:45 A devout Christian, Bush makes pilgrimage to Jesus' birthplace


22:45 MI Colonel discharged from IDF for losing memory disk with classified files


20:59 Rabbi's incitement against Olmert threatens to split Chabad


19:36 Manchester United invited to play during Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations


20:10 Book on Greek-Jewish roots of Sarkozy goes on sale in Greece


21:20 Police arrest five students who protested near Tamir's home


16:18 Israeli envoy to U.S.: All options are on the table regarding Iran


19:47 Jewish cemetery in New Jersey desecrated by vandals


14:26 British magazine names Israeli model Bar Refaeli 'Body of 2008'